Meaning & readings
play
Origin
The character combines a motion or travel radical on the left with the component 斿 on the right. The left part suggests movement or going somewhere, which connects to the idea of play as a leisure activity—moving around freely without a fixed purpose. The 斿 component serves as a sound hint, roughly indicating the character's pronunciation, while the left radical grounds the meaning in the concept of wandering or roaming. Together, they create a character that captures play as a form of free, purposeless movement.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 斿
- ⻌
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
- 162
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #941 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0904A