Meaning & readings

land, six

On’yomi リク、ロク
Kun’yomi おか
Nanori くが、たち、みち、む、むつ

Origin

The character combines the earth radical on the left, which signals the character relates to land or ground, with a sound component on the right that hints at how to pronounce it. The earth radical makes sense because means land or an expanse of solid ground, as opposed to water. Over time, this character also picked up the meaning "six" in Japanese, likely through a sound association rather than anything to do with its visual shape.

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

11 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • sound hint right

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

Common words

  • 上陸 じょうりく landing; going ashore
  • 大陸 たいりく continent
  • 着陸 ちゃくりく landing; alighting
  • 内陸 ないりく inland
  • 北陸 ほくりく Hokuriku region (of Honshu; incl. Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa and Fukui prefectures)
  • 離陸 りりく takeoff
  • 陸軍 りくぐん army
  • 陸上 りくじょう (on) land; ground

Reference

Strokes
11
Kangxi radical
170
Grade
Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#736 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+09678