Meaning & readings
carry, luck, destiny, fate, lot, transport, progress, advance
Origin
The character 運 combines two parts: the radical on the left (the "movement" or "road" classifier) which points toward ideas of motion and transport, and the component 軍 on the right which serves as a sound hint, suggesting how the character should be pronounced. Over time, the meaning expanded from the concrete idea of "carrying" or "transporting" things along a road to the more abstract senses of "luck" and "fate" — perhaps because both involve forces that carry or propel us forward in life, much like a vehicle carries cargo. The shape we see today developed through centuries of stylization from these original meaningful and phonetic components.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 軍
- ⻌
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 運ぶ はこぶ to carry; to transport
- 運営 うんえい management; administration
- 運河 うんが (navigable) canal; waterway
- 運休 うんきゅう suspension (of a transportation service); cancellation
- 運航 うんこう operation (of a ship or aircraft route); service
- 運行 うんこう operation (of a bus or train service); service
- 運賃 うんちん (passenger) fare
- 運転 うんてん operation (of a machine); running
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 162
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #255 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0904B