Meaning & readings
baggage, shoulder-pole load, bear (a burden), shoulder (a gun), load, cargo, freight
Origin
This character combines a grass radical at the top with the character 何 at the bottom, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The grass radical suggests something plant-related or natural, but here it's used more broadly to indicate a tangible object or bundle. The bottom component 何 (pronounced "ka") guides how to pronounce 荷, and over time the combined character came to mean things that are bundled, carried, or borne as a load—like baggage or cargo. The visual sense of something physical and portable, suggested by the grass radical, fits naturally with the meaning of bearing a burden or load on one's shoulders.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 艹
- 何
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1230 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08377