Meaning & readings
status quo, conditions, circumstances, form, appearance
Origin
This character combines a left component that sounds roughly like "jo" with the dog radical on the right. The dog radical classifies this word into a category related to animals or their behavior. Over time, the character's meaning expanded from something concrete about animal form or appearance to the more abstract sense of "condition" or "status quo" — the way something appears or presents itself. The sound hint on the left is what tells you how to pronounce it, while the dog radical helped orient the meaning toward observable characteristics and outward form.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- ⺦
- 犬
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 94
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #298 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+072B6