字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

ball, sphere

On’yomi キュウ
Kun’yomi たま
Nanori く

Origin

This character combines the "jade" radical on the left, which classifies precious objects, with a sound hint on the right that tells you how to pronounce it. In ancient China, the character evolved to represent a sphere or ball—likely because balls were often made from jade or other precious materials, connecting the meaning to the jade radical. The right component is purely phonetic and doesn't contribute to the meaning. Over time, the character came to mean any kind of ball or sphere, not just precious ones.

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

球 11 strokes

Components

  • 王 radical left
  • 求 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

  • 気球 ききゅう balloon (hot-air, weather, etc.); blimp
  • 球技 きゅうぎ ball game (e.g. baseball, tennis, soccer)
  • 球菌 きゅうきん coccus
  • 球場 きゅうじょう baseball stadium; ballpark
  • 球団 きゅうだん baseball team
  • 四球 しきゅう base on balls; walk
  • 死球 しきゅう pitch that hits the batter
  • 制球 せいきゅう (pitcher's) control

Related kanji

Same sound component 求
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
11
Kangxi radical
96
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#302 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+07403