Meaning & readings

clothing, admit, obey, discharge

On’yomi フク
Nanori はっ、はつ、はら

Origin

The left side, , originally meant "flesh" or "body" and here indicates the general category of things related to the body. The right component is a sound hint that tells you roughly how to pronounce the character — it doesn't contribute a meaning of its own. When you put these together, a character about the body's covering or adornment naturally came to mean "clothing." Over time, the meaning extended to "wear" or "dress," and then further to "obey" or "submit to" — perhaps because wearing clothes means accepting them on your body, similar to how obeying means accepting rules.

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

8 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • 𠬝 sound hint right

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

Common words

  • 衣服 いふく clothes
  • 軍服 ぐんぷく military uniform
  • 呉服 ごふく cloth (for Japanese clothes); kimono fabrics
  • 克服 こくふく conquest (of a difficulty, illness, crisis, etc.); overcoming
  • 制服 せいふく uniform
  • 征服 せいふく conquest; subjugation
  • 喪服 もふく mourning clothes; mourning attire
  • 着服 ちゃくふく embezzlement; misappropriation

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
74
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#873 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+0670D