Meaning & readings
raise, elevate, hoist, praise, extol, fry in deep fat
Origin
The character combines the hand radical on the left, which marks this as an action you do with your hands, with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The sound component originally comes from a character meaning "bright" or "clear," which helps indicate how to say this character. Together, the hand element and the sound hint created a character for the physical action of raising or lifting something up with your hands, which later expanded to include related meanings like praising someone or frying food in oil.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 扌
- 昜
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 掲揚 けいよう hoisting (e.g. a flag); raising
- 高揚 こうよう elevation (of spirits); raising (of morale)
- 浮揚 ふよう floating (e.g. in air, water); floatation
- 揚げ あげ deep-frying; deep-fried food
- 抑揚 よくよう intonation; accent
- 荷揚げ にあげ unloading; landing
- 旗揚げ はたあげ raising an army; raising a banner
- 水揚げ みずあげ landing; unloading (e.g. a ship)
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1316 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+063DA