Meaning & readings
navigate, sail, cruise, fly
Origin
The character 航 combines a boat (舟 on the left) with a sound component (亢 on the right) that hints at its pronunciation "kou." The boat radical directly represents the core meaning: since boats and ships navigate water, the character came to mean sailing and navigating. Over time, the meaning expanded to include flying through the air, as both activities involve moving through a medium from one place to another. The right component doesn't add to the meaning—it's just there to guide readers on how to pronounce the character.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 舟
- 亢
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 運航 うんこう operation (of a ship or aircraft route); service
- 航海 こうかい (sea) voyage; navigation
- 航空 こうくう aviation; flying
- 航行 こうこう cruise; navigation
- 航法 こうほう sailing; navigation
- 航路 こうろ (air or sea) route; course
- 就航 しゅうこう entering service (on a route; of a plane or ship); going into commission
- 巡航 じゅんこう cruise; cruising
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 137
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #665 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0822A