Meaning & readings
art, technique, skill, means, trick, resources, magic
Origin
The character 術 combines the component 行, which refers to doing or going (suggesting action or movement), with 朮, a sound hint that tells you roughly how to pronounce the character. The combination of "action" or "means of doing" with this sound marker created a character for skilled action—technique, art, or a method of accomplishing something. Over time, the meaning expanded to include tricks, resources, or any clever means to an end. The visual structure groups these ideas together in a way that helped speakers remember both the sound and sense of the word for "skill" or "technique."
Components
- 行
- 朮
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 144
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #350 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08853