Meaning & readings
lightly, trifling, unimportant
Origin
The character 軽 combines the radical 車, meaning "vehicle" or "cart," with a sound hint component on the right that suggests the pronunciation. The left side showing a vehicle is key: a light or easily-moved cart led to the meaning of "light" in weight. Over time, this sense of "light" broadened to mean "unimportant" or "trifling"—the same way we use "light" in English to describe something of little weight or consequence. The right component doesn't add meaning but helps indicate how the character should be pronounced.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 車
- 圣
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 気軽 きがる carefree; buoyant
- 軽い かるい light (i.e. not heavy); feeling light (i.e. offering little resistance, moving easily)
- 軽快 けいかい light (of movements); nimble
- 軽減 けいげん abatement; reduction
- 軽視 けいし making light of; thinking little of
- 軽傷 けいしょう minor injury
- 軽食 けいしょく light meal; snack
- 軽震 けいしん weak earthquake
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 159
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #790 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+08EFD