Meaning & readings
government office
Origin
The character 庁 combines a roof radical (the "crown" shape 广) that indicates a building, with 丁 as a sound hint suggesting the Chinese-derived pronunciation チョウ. The roof element makes sense because government offices are physical buildings where official business happens. Over time, the character came to represent the concept of a government office itself rather than just the building structure.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 广
- 丁
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 官庁 かんちょう government office; government agency
- 県庁 けんちょう prefectural office
- 省庁 しょうちょう ministries and government offices; the authorities
- 庁舎 ちょうしゃ government office building
- 都庁 とちょう Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Office)
- 府庁 ふちょう prefectural office (of Osaka or Kyoto)
- 政庁 せいちょう government office
- 官公庁 かんこうちょう government and municipal offices; public agencies
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 53
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #793 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05E81