Meaning & readings
candy, cakes, fruit
On’yomi カ
Origin
This character combines a grass radical at the top with the character 果 (fruit) at the bottom, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The grass radical classifies the character as relating to plants, while 果 suggests how to say it. Over time, the meaning shifted from just "fruit" to include processed plant-based foods like candy and cakes—sweet treats made from plant materials. The combination essentially marks this as a plant-based food category.
Components
- 艹
- 果
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1719 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+083D3