Meaning & readings
fight, war
On’yomi トウ
Kun’yomi たたか.う、あらそ.う
Nanori と
Origin
This character combines a gate radical (門) as a framing element with sound and meaning components inside. The character 豆 provides a sound hint suggesting roughly how the character should be pronounced (like "tō"). The addition of 寸, a measure of small distance, likely contributes to the semantic meaning, and together these inner components suggest the idea of conflict or struggle occurring within defined boundaries, much like a confrontation that takes place in an enclosed space. The gate frame emphasizes this sense of an enclosed struggle or confined battle.
Common words
- 格闘 かくとう (hand-to-hand) fight; grapple
- 敢闘 かんとう fighting bravely
- 共闘 きょうとう joint struggle; common (united) front
- 健闘 けんとう fighting bravely; strenuous efforts
- 春闘 しゅんとう spring labor offensive; annual spring wage bargaining round
- 戦闘 せんとう battle; fight
- 闘争 とうそう fight; battle
- 奮闘 ふんとう strenuous effort; hard struggle
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 169
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #751 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+095D8