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Kanji Detail for 河 - "river, stream, milky way"

河

  • Meaning

    河 means "river, stream, milky way."

    1. River - A large flowing body of water.

    2. Stream - A watercourse; a flowing channel.

    3. Milky Way - The galaxy seen across the sky.

    4. Yellow River - China's great river.

  • Words using 河

    • 河川 かせん Listen rivers
    • 河口 かこう Listen mouth of river; estuary
    • 大河 たいが Listen large river; epic (of a novel, drama, etc.); long-form
    • 銀河 ぎんが Listen Milky Way; galaxy
    • 河川敷 かせんじき Listen flood plain; river terrace; riverside area
    • 運河 うんが Listen (navigable) canal; waterway
    • 氷河 ひょうが Listen glacier

  • Four-character idioms with 河

    • 二河白道 にがびゃくどう Listen the road to paradise is a white road between two rivers, one of water (wrath) and one of fire (greed)
    • 屍山血河 しざんけつが Listen heaps of bodies and streams of blood; fierce battle
    • 暴虎馮河 ぼうこひょうが Listen foolhardy courage
    • 白河夜船 しらかわよふね Listen being fast asleep (and totally unaware of what is going on around one); know-it-all manner
    • 百年河清 ひゃくねんかせい Listen waiting for one hundred years for the waters of the Yellow River to clear; waiting in vain for an unlikely event; waiting for pigs to fly

  • Tattoo check: 河

    • Verified meaning: river, stream, milky way
    • Official Jōyō kanji — a standard character every Japanese reader recognises
    • Used in real Japanese given names (read か, かわ, こう, は)

    A single kanji rarely maps one-to-one onto an English word. Read the meanings and associations above as a set — a character that fits the dictionary definition can still carry a connotation you did not intend.

  • Name readings of 河

    Surnames 河(か)Listen 河(かわ)Listen 河(こう)Listen 河(は)Listen

  • Compare with other kanji that mean the same thing:

  • Dictionary Citations

    The meaning above is based on the following sources:

    KANJIDIC2 A comprehensive Japanese-English kanji dictionary

    river

    Unihan Unicode Han Database for CJK characters

    river; stream; the Yellow River

    CC-CEDICT A Chinese-English dictionary

    river (CL:條|条[tiao2],道[dao4]); (bound form) the Yellow River; (bound form) the Milky Way; (bound form) (on restaurant menus) rice noodles 河粉[he2 fen3]

    Make Me a Hanzi Open-source Chinese character data

    river, stream; the Yellow river

    XSZD Xuéshēng Zìdiǎn (學生字典) - Student's Dictionary

    Name of a river. Today called the Yellow River. A great river of China. Source is at the eastern foot of Bayankala Mountain in Qinghai. Flows through Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Pingyuan, Hebei, Shandong, and enters the sea. Total length is over 8,800 li. Its lower reaches have changed many times throughout history. Hence, there are names like Yu's River, the Old Yellow River, and the New Yellow River, because the course it takes and where it enters the sea have differed. | A general term for waterways. As in canals (運河), inland rivers (內河). | 河漢 (He-han). Refers to the Milky Way. Lofty and boundless. Hence, exaggerated talk that cannot be trusted is also called 河漢. The phrase comes from Zhuangzi.

  • Onyomi

    tip

    ka(カ) カ

  • Kunyomi

    tip

    kawa(かわ) かわ

  • Strokes

    tip

    8 strokes

  • Radical

    tip

    水 氵 氺 (mizu・sanzui・shitamizu)

  • Related Keywords

    river stream milky way watercourse bank brook channel creek current delta estuary floodplain flow rapids tributary waterway

Sentences including 河

  • Is this a river?

More kanji with the radical 水 氵 氺 (mizu・sanzui・shitamizu)

See all kanji with this radical →

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