detain, fasten, halt, stop
Came from Chinese. It usually shows up when the kanji is joined to another, forming a compound word.
It is Japanese. It usually shows up when the kanji stands alone or is followed by hiragana.
The order matters: it is what makes handwriting come out legible, and it is how dictionaries index the character.
Visual decomposition, for recognising and comparing — not always the character's origin.
Where it appears is highlighted — the translation doesn't always make that visible.
店の中を全部見て回った後、ついに目に留まるものがありました。
Mise no naka wo zenbu mite mawatta ato, tsui ni me ni tomaru mono ga arimashita.
After going through the whole store, something finally caught their eye.
電話はつながらず、そのまま留守番電話になりました。
Denwa wa tsunagarazu, sono mama rusuban denwa ni narimashita.
The call didn't even go through — it went straight to voicemail.
Readings and meanings: KANJIDIC2 · Decomposition: KRADFILE · Both from Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, CC BY-SA 4.0 · data from 2026-09-07 · Strokes: KanjiVG, Ulrich Apel, CC BY-SA 3.0