Meaning & readings
hawser, class (genus), rope, cord, cable
On’yomi コウ
Kun’yomi つな
Origin
The character combines the thread radical, which appears on the left and marks this as something made of fibers, with a sound hint on the right that tells you how to pronounce it. The thread radical on its own represents thin strands, but when you add the sound component, it creates a character specifically for thicker fiber products like ropes, cables, and hawsers. Over time, the meaning expanded beyond just physical cords to include abstract classes or categories, possibly because a "class" is like a grouping or strand that holds things together. The character literally looks like simplified strokes for thread, so readers could immediately recognize it was about fiber-based materials.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 120
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1053 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07DB1