Meaning & readings
protect, guarantee, keep, preserve, sustain, support
Origin
This character combines a person marker on the left with a sound hint on the right. The left component, a simplified version of the character for "person," indicates this word relates to human action. The right component, which roughly sounds like "bao," provides a pronunciation guide. Together, the character developed to mean "to protect" or "to keep safe" — the idea of one person supporting or safeguarding something. The combination of the person element with this phonetic guide created a word that emphasizes the human act of preservation and care.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亻
- 呆
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #146 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04FDD