Meaning & readings

pain, hurt, damage, bruise

On’yomi ツウ
Kun’yomi いた.い、いた.む、いた.ましい、いた.める

Origin

The character combines the radical 疒, which classifies characters related to illness or bodily conditions, with 甬, a component that serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The 甬 component doesn't contribute meaning but rather tells you roughly how the character sounds. Together, these elements create a character that represents pain and injury—the category of sickness (疒) combined with the sound pattern (甬) produces a word for physical hurt or damage to the body.

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

12 strokes

Components

  • radical top-left wrap
  • sound hint tarec

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

Common words

  • 苦痛 くつう pain; agony
  • 腰痛 ようつう lower back pain; lumbago
  • 陣痛 じんつう labour pains; labor pains
  • 痛い いたい painful; sore
  • 痛む いたむ to hurt; to ache
  • 痛感 つうかん feeling keenly; fully realizing
  • 痛恨 つうこん deep regret; great sorrow
  • 痛手 いたで serious wound

Reference

Strokes
12
Kangxi radical
104
Grade
Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#903 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+075DB