Meaning & readings
road-way, street, district, journey, course, moral, teachings
On’yomi ドウ、トウ
Kun’yomi みち、いう
Nanori さ、じ、ど、みつ、おさむ
Origin
This character combines a sound hint with a classifier for movement and paths. The left side is a radical meaning "go" or "walk," which points toward the meaning of a road or way. The right side, which looks like a head, acts as a sound hint telling you roughly how to pronounce the character—it doesn't mean "head" here. Over time, the combination came to mean any path you travel along, whether physical like a street or abstract like a course of action or moral principle.
Components
- 首
- ⻌
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 沿道 えんどう roadside; wayside
- 横道 よこみち byway; side street
- 花道 はなみち elevated walkway through the audience to the stage
- 街道 かいどう highway (esp. one existing from the Edo period); main road
- 軌道 きどう orbit; trajectory
- 弓道 きゅうどう kyūdō; kyudo
- 筋道 すじみち reason; logic
- 剣道 けんどう kendo; Japanese martial art using bamboo swords
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 162
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #207 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+09053