漢字Kanji · in Human Body & People
孝: filial piety, child's respect
N1 (our estimate)7 strokesGrade 6Your ink: 白 Not met
子 carries the meaning · 耂 is drawn in
7 strokes
Bronze · Western Zhou Today
Bronze: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
One reading, and the words that use it
コウkou · on'yomi · in compounds
- 忠孝ちゅうこうloyalty and filial piety
- 親孝行なおやこうこうなhaving filial piety [adj.]
- 親不孝なおやふこうなlacking filial piety [adj.]
- 孝行するこうこうするexercise filial piety [v.i.]
- 孝行こうこう
- 不孝ふこうundutifulness to one's parents
- 親孝行おやこうこう
- 親不孝おやふこう
Also read キョウ, with no example words in our sources. Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0 · JMdict, EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0.
成り立ち
Where it comes from
Origin · sourced
Ideogrammic compound (會意)耂 an old man with long hair, bent over + 子 a child
An old man and a child, filial piety between generations.
Source: Wiktionary, 孝 (rev. 93746789), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Old (老) + child (子). A beautiful symbol of a "child" supporting an "elder"—the core virtue of respecting and caring for one's parents.”
繋がり
Connections
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
Easy to confuse
The difference, side by side孝 filial piety · 子
vs老 old man · 匕In ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · xiào
Same form: 孝 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).
- Simplified
- 孝 mainland China, Singapore
- Traditional
- 孝 Taiwan, Hong Kong
Pinyin xiào 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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