厄: unlucky, misfortune

JLPT level N1
4 strokes
Radical 厂

Also bad luck, disaster

Readings

On’yomi

ヤク

Kun’yomi

No kun’yomi listed in KANJIDIC2.

On’yomi and kun’yomi?

On’yomi are readings that came from Chinese, written here in katakana. Kun’yomi are native Japanese readings, written in hiragana. Which one is used depends on the word: kanji in compounds often take an on’yomi, and a kanji standing alone often takes a kun’yomi.

Stroke order

0.5×1×2×

Strokes from KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Example words

厄(やく)misfortune; bad luck; evil
厄介(やっかい)trouble; burden; nuisance
厄年(やくどし)unlucky year; critical year; year (esp. age 25 and 42 for men, 19 and 33 for women) that is considered unlucky (orig. in Onmyōdō)

Where do these words come from?

They are common words containing 厄, from JMdict, picked automatically with words made of easier kanji first. They are not graded by JLPT level.

Keep exploring

Same radical. KANJIDIC2 files these kanji under radical 厂 (no. 27), like 厄.

What is a radical?

Dictionaries file every kanji under one of 214 radicals, a component used for looking it up. A shared radical often hints at a shared theme, but not always, and it says nothing certain about a character’s history. A radical can change shape inside a kanji, as 水 becomes 氵.

Additional detailsSchool grade, frequency, Unicode and sources

School grade: Secondary school
Newspaper frequency: 2,123 of 2,500
Classical radical: 厂 no. 27
Unicode: U+5384

School grade comes from the Japanese school curriculum. Frequency is the rank among the 2,500 most common kanji in newspapers. Neither is a JLPT level.

Sources for this entry

KANJIDIC2 (CC BY-SA 4.0): meanings, on’yomi, kun’yomi, stroke count, school grade, newspaper frequency, radical
Jonathan Waller's JLPT kanji lists (CC BY): JLPT level
JMdict (CC BY-SA 4.0): example words
KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0): stroke order