漢字Kanji · in Animals & Wildlife
狂: lunatic, insane
Also: crazy, confuse
⺨ carries the meaning · 王 gives the sound
Small seal · Qin Today
Small seal: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Three readings, and the words that use each
キョウkyou · on'yomi · in compounds
- 狂気きょうきmadness
- 狂人きょうじんlunatic, madman
- 狂言きょうげんNoh farce
- 狂犬病きょうけんびょうrabies, hydrophobia
- 発狂するはっきょうするgo mad, lose one's mind
くるうkuruu · kun'yomi · on its own
- 狂うくるうgo mad, get out of order [v.i.]
- 狂わすくるわすdrive mad, disrupt [v.t.]
くるおしいkuruoshii · kun'yomi
- 狂おしいくるおしいmad, crazy, distraught [adj.]
Also read くるおしい, with no example words in our sources. Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0.
Where it comes from
Origin · sourced
Phono-semantic compound (形聲)犬 dog, as 犭 (meaning) + 㞷 (sound)
The latter is the ancient form of 往 (“to go”).
Source: Wiktionary, 狂 (rev. 93355886), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Beast radical + king (王) = imagine a wild beast that thinks it is a king, or a human king acting with the uncontrolled fury of a beast.”
Connections
The 王 family reads オウ (ou); 狂 is read キョウ.
Easy to confuse
The difference, side by sideIn ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · kuáng
Same form: 狂 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).
- Simplified
- 狂 mainland China, Singapore
- Traditional
- 狂 Taiwan, Hong Kong
Pinyin kuáng most common reading
Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.