Meaning & readings
retreat, withdraw, retire, resign, repel, expel, reject
Origin
The character 退 combines two elements to express the idea of moving backward. The left component 艮 represents stopping or halting, while the right component (the walking radical) indicates movement or action. Together they suggest the action of stopping forward motion and instead moving in reverse or away — which captures the meaning of retreat, withdraw, or step back. Over time, this visual combination of "halt" plus "go" became the standard way to write this character, even as its pronunciations and exact shades of meaning evolved.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 艮
- ⻌
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 162
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #424 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+09000