What 飼 means
It means feeding, nourishing, or keeping an animal.
Traditional Chinese dictionaries connect 飼 with the older form 飤 and with 食, the character for food or eating: the shared idea is providing food. Japanese records the verb in its older kana spelling かふ in the Nihon Shoki, an early chronicle, in 720. A late 8th-century poem in the Man'yōshū, an anthology, uses it for giving a horse water. Older Japanese also used 飼う for giving medicine or poison and, figuratively, for putting harmful ideas into someone's mind.
Why does 飼 mean differently in Japanese and Chinese?
Japanese centers on keeping an animal; Chinese often on feeding it.
Japanese uses 飼う for keeping or raising a pet. Traditional Chinese uses 飼 in 飼養 for feeding or raising and in 飼料 for animal feed; simplified Chinese writes 饲. The next character specifies the compound: Japanese 飼育 means rearing animals, while 飼料 means animal feed.
Neutral written vocabulary; the surrounding compound or proverb supplies its tone.
In Japanese, 飼う and 買う share かう: one means animal care, the other a purchase.
Part of the collection
Who writes 飼
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsKeep or raise a dog; ordinary pet language.
Don't confuse it with
1買う Japanese 飼う and 買う are both read かう: the first means keep or raise an animal; the second means buy.
Related characters
3
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 飼 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find 飼
- Also called
- 飼う · かう · 饲
- Search it as
- 飼育 · 飼養 · 飼料 · animal-feeding character · 買う
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
飼\98FCCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.