Meaning & readings
assault, hit, beat, thrash
Origin
The character 殴 combines a sound hint on the left with a meaning component on the right. The right side, 殳, is a classifier that depicts a weapon or stick used for striking, which directly connects to the meaning of hitting or beating. The left component 区 serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation オウ, telling you roughly how to say the character rather than contributing to its meaning. Together, the stick-related visual element and the sound indicator combine to create a character that means to assault or strike someone.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 区
- 殳
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 79
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1622 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06BB4