Meaning & readings

pining, yearn for, love dearly, adore

On’yomi
Kun’yomi した.う

Origin

The character combines a heart radical at the bottom, which classifies this as a word about emotions and feelings, with the character 莫 on top that serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The 莫 component doesn't contribute its own meaning here—it's mainly there to suggest how the character should be pronounced. Together, the parts create a character that expresses the emotional yearning or longing that happens in the heart when you deeply love or pine for someone.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

14 strokes

Components

  • sound hint top
  • radical bottom

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 思慕 しぼ yearning; longing for
  • 慕う したう to yearn for; to long for

Reference

Strokes
14
Kangxi radical
61
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#2100 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+06155