Meaning & readings
cannon, gun
On’yomi ホウ
Nanori づつ
Origin
The character 砲 combines "stone" (石) on the left, which classifies it as something hard and solid like a weapon, with "wrap" (包) on the right serving as a sound hint for the pronunciation ホウ. The stone radical makes sense because early cannons were often made of stone or had stone components, and the character evolved to represent any type of cannon or gun—objects associated with hard, solid materials. The right component doesn't contribute to the meaning, only guides you toward the correct sound when reading the character aloud.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 112
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1268 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07832