Meaning & readings

dispatch, despatch, send, give, donate, do, undertake

On’yomi ケン
Kun’yomi つか.う、-つか.い、-づか.い、つか.わす、や.る

Origin

This character combines a sound hint on the right side with a movement radical on the left. The left component, which looks like a walking figure, suggests the sense of sending someone or giving a direction. The right side provides a phonetic clue to how the character is pronounced in Chinese, making it a sound-plus-meaning combination. Together, these parts create a character that originally meant to send or dispatch someone on a task, and later expanded to mean giving or doing an action.

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

13 strokes

Components

  • +2+3+11+2+11+2 sound hint nyoc
  • radical bottom-left wrap

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

Common words

  • 先遣 せんけん sending ahead
  • 派遣 はけん dispatch; despatch
  • 気遣い きづかい consideration; concern
  • 遣唐使 けんとうし envoy to Tang China
  • 小遣い こづかい pocket money; spending money
  • 心遣い こころづかい consideration (for); thoughtfulness
  • 仮名遣い かなづかい kana orthography; syllabary spelling
  • 言葉遣い ことばづかい speech; expression

Reference

Strokes
13
Kangxi radical
162
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#664 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+09063