Kanji Kaisen

漢字Kanji · in Human Body & People

僕: me, I (male)

Also: servant, manservant

JLPT N114 strokesSecondary schoolYour ink: 白 Not met

亻 carries the meaning · 菐 gives the sound

14 strokes

One reading, and the words that use it

ボクboku · on'yomi · in compounds

  • 僕ぼくI (masculine)
  • 従僕じゅうぼくservant
  • 下僕げぼくservant
  • 公僕こうぼくpublic servant
  • 僕らぼくらwe; us
  • 僕たちぼくたちwe

Also read しもべ, with no example words in our sources. Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0 · JMdict, EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Learn it 4 steps
Print sheet Present
成り立ち

Where it comes from

Memory story · made up to help you remember

“See the person standing tall, ready to interact with the world! When this radical appears on the left, it signals that the kanji describes a human quality, a social relationship, or an action that people perform.”
More in the 亻 person story
繋がり
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
亻

Also built on person (亻)

All 103
菐

Also built on 菐

僕 takes the 菐 family's reading, ボク (boku).

Also read ボク

8 kanji share this on'yomi

Easy to confuse

The difference, side by side
僕 me · 亻
vs撲 slap · 扌
僕 has 亻 where 撲 has 扌.
In ChineseSimplified 仆 · traditional, as in Japanese · pū

Japan keeps the traditional form 僕; mainland China simplifies it to 仆.

Simplified
仆 mainland China, Singapore
Traditional
僕 Taiwan, Hong Kong

Pinyin pū most common reading

Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.

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