Meaning & readings

-times, round, game, revolve, counter for occurrences

On’yomi カイ、エ
Kun’yomi まわ.る、-まわ.る、-まわ.り、まわ.す、-まわ.す、まわ.し-、-まわ.し、もとお.る、か.える

Origin

The character is shaped like a square or enclosure, which represents something that goes around or encloses space. The repeated frame structure suggests the idea of going in a circle or coming back to where you started — like walking around the perimeter of something. From this visual sense of circular motion or returning to the starting point, the character came to mean "revolve," "round," and "times" (as in counting repeated occurrences). The enclosed shape itself is a picture of the cyclical, revolving concept at the heart of all these related meanings.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).

6 strokes

Components

  • radical enclosure
  • meaning part
  • radical enclosure

Common words

  • 一回 いっかい once; one time
  • 何回 なんかい how many times
  • 回し まわし mawashi; belt
  • 回す まわす to turn; to rotate
  • 回忌 かいき death anniversary; anniversary of a person's death
  • 回帰 かいき return (to); revolution
  • 回顧 かいこ recollecting; reminiscing
  • 回収 かいしゅう collection; recovery

Reference

Strokes
6
Kangxi radical
31
Grade
Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#50 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+056DE