Meaning & readings
floating, float, rise to surface
Origin
The character 浮 combines the water radical on the left, which shows this is about a liquid-related action, with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The water radical itself suggests movement or qualities of water, while the right side provides the phonetic clue for how to say the word. Together, these elements create a character that describes what happens when something moves upward through water—it floats or rises to the surface. The pairing of the water classifier with the sound hint became the standard way to write this common physical action in Japanese.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 孚
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #776 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06D6E