Meaning & readings
defeat, negative, -, minus, bear, owe, assume a responsibility
On’yomi フ
Kun’yomi ま.ける、ま.かす、お.う
Origin
This character combines two ideas to express "defeat" and "owing." The top component represents a person carrying or bearing something on their back, while the bottom component 貝 originally meant shells or money (shells were used as currency). Together they create the image of someone bearing a debt or burden—the sense of owing something or being weighed down by obligation. This visual metaphor extended to mean "defeat," since a defeated person bears the loss. The character thus captures both the physical idea of carrying a load and the abstract idea of bearing responsibility or loss.
Components
- 𠂊
- 貝
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 154
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #443 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08CA0