手
Meaning in Englishhand
Animated kanji stroke order
Related sentences
Word context
What it means
手 (te) means the hand as a physical body part and the basic notion of manual action or control; it refers to the organ used for grasping, manipulating objects, gesturing and touching, and by extension denotes human manual capability or agency in activities.
Main meanings
- 1. skill or technique used to perform a task (ability or craft distinct from raw strength).
- 2. a method, means, or way of doing something (how something is achieved).
- 3. a person who performs a task or role — e.g., a worker or helper identified by function.
- 4. a single move or play in games and strategic contexts (a tactical action).
- 5. help or assistance when used in compounds or set expressions indicating support or intervention.
How to use it
Used widely in everyday and formal speech to refer to the literal hand, to abilities (skill), to methods (means), and to people in specific roles; appears in common verbs and compounds to indicate helping or doing (colloquial and polite forms exist depending on verb/compound), in sports/games to name moves, and in business contexts to denote personnel or responsibility.
Variants and close terms
- 腕 (ude) — arm; also used to talk about skill or ability.
- 手先 (tesaki) — fingertips; can mean a crafty or skilled person in informal contexts.
- 指 (yubi) — finger; narrower anatomical term.
- 足 (ashi) — foot; anatomical antonym in many expressions.
Composition
The character 手 is a pictograph representing a hand; its strokes depict fingers and a palm, and when used as a left-side radical it appears as the abbreviated form 扌, which signals meanings related to hands, actions or handling in compound kanji.
Etymology
手 shows two Japanese readings: the native kun reading te and the Sino-Japanese on reading shu; the kun’yomi te reflects a long-standing Japonic word for the body part, while the on’yomi shu entered Japanese via classical Chinese pronunciations and is used mainly in Sino-Japanese compounds.
Origin
The physical concept of a hand is prehistoric in Japan, but the written 手 character arrived with Chinese writing around the early centuries CE; it appears in classical Japanese texts and inscriptions from the Nara and Heian periods as both a standalone word and as a component of compound vocabulary describing actions, roles and tools.
Word class
noun (名詞), kanji character (漢字), bound morpheme/suffix in compounds (接尾・語幹)