Meaning & readings
supplement, supply, make good, offset, compensate, assistant, learner
On’yomi ホ
Kun’yomi おぎな.う
Origin
The kanji 補 combines the clothing radical on the left with a sound component on the right that hints at its pronunciation. The clothing element works well for the meaning because mending or patching cloth — adding material to supplement a worn garment — is the core sense of "to supplement or make good." Over time, this practical idea of repair and addition expanded to mean any kind of supplementing or compensating, including assisting or offsetting a loss. The right side, 甫, is purely a sound guide and does not contribute to the meaning.
Components
- 衤
- 甫
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 145
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #332 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+088DC