Meaning & readings
pathetic, grief, sorrow, pathos, pity, sympathize
Origin
This character appears to be pictographic, showing a person bending or collapsing under emotional weight. The shape suggests a figure in distress or mourning, with the upper strokes representing the head and shoulders curving downward in a posture of grief or despair. The overall composition conveys the physical manifestation of sorrow—how deep sadness makes a person bow or weaken. Over time, this visual image of a grieving person came to represent the abstract feelings of sorrow, pity, and sympathy themselves.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (哀).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1715 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+054C0