Meaning & readings
trust, request
On’yomi ライ
Kun’yomi たの.む、たの.もしい、たよ.る
Nanori よち、より
Origin
The character 頼 combines two parts to express trust and reliance. On the right is 頁, the radical for "head" or "face," which suggests this character relates to the mind or mental faculties. On the left, 束 serves as a sound hint, indicating roughly how the character should be pronounced in Chinese. Together, the visual pairing of a head-related radical with a sound component created a character meaning to rely on someone mentally—to trust them with your thoughts and concerns.
Components
- 束
- 頁
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 181
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #708 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0983C