窮 – hard up, destitute, suffer

15 strokesJōyō (secondary school)#1756 in newspaper frequencyN1 vocabulary

The kanji 窮 means hard up, destitute, suffer, perplexed, cornered. Its on’yomi (Chinese-derived reading) is キュウ、キョウ (kyuu, kyou); its kun’yomi (native Japanese reading) is きわ.める、きわ.まる、きわ.まり、きわ.み (kiwameru, kiwamaru, kiwamari, kiwami). It is written with 15 strokes, under radical 穴 (no. 116).

Stroke order

Stroke order from KanjiVG. Practise others with the stroke order lookup.

Readings

Type	Reading	Romaji
On’yomi	キュウ	kyuu
On’yomi	キョウ	kyou
Kun’yomi	きわ.める	kiwameru
Kun’yomi	きわ.まる	kiwamaru
Kun’yomi	きわ.まり	kiwamari
Kun’yomi	きわ.み	kiwami

A dot separates the kanji’s part from the okurigana (kana written after it), e.g. まな.ぶ → 学ぶ.

Radical and components

Radical: 穴 (Kangxi radical 116). Components: 弓・穴・身・儿・宀.

Words using 窮

窮屈きゅうくつnarrow窮乏きゅうぼうpoverty

Example sentences

列車のコンパートメントはすぐ窮屈になる。

Train compartments soon get cramped.

Tatoeba #77546

飢饉が人々にひどい窮乏をもたらした。

Famine caused great distress among the people.

Tatoeba #182955

Kanji with the same radical

空究突窓穴窒

Sources: KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0), KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0), Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR). About the data.