The kanji 砲 primarily means "cannon," "gun," or "artillery." It refers to weapons that launch projectiles with explosive force. It conveys the idea of something that projects something with force.

・On-yomi (音読み): ホウ (hō) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): None, as the meaning is primarily conveyed through the on-yomi.

⚫︎ 大砲 Translation: cannon ⚫︎ 迫撃砲 Translation: mortar ⚫︎ 砲撃 Translation: bombardment; shelling

The kanji 砲 is a phono-semantic compound. The phonetic component is 包 (hō), which means "to wrap" or "to contain." The semantic (meaning) component is 石 (ishi), which means "stone" or can be a component used to denote "weapon" in this case. Originally, cannons would have been large stone-like objects, thus the character visually linking it to stone-based projectiles. Together, 包 and 石 form 砲, indicating a weapon that contained an explosive and launched projectiles. The shape of 包 also likely referred to the wrapping of the explosive.