The kanji character 除 generally conveys the meaning of "to remove," "to eliminate," "to exclude," "to get rid of," or "to deduct." It implies the act of taking something away, eliminating something unwanted, or subtracting from a total.

・On-yomi (音読み): ジョ (jo) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): のぞ（く） (nozo(ku))

⚫︎ 掃除（そうじ） Translation: Cleaning; to clean ⚫︎ 除外（じょがい） Translation: Exclusion ⚫︎ 削除（さくじょ） Translation: Deletion; to delete

The kanji 除 is a phono-semantic compound (形声文字, keisei moji). The left side is the radical 阝（こざとへん, ko-zatohen), which is the "village" radical. The right side is 余（よ, yo), which means "to spare" or "excess." This implies that the original meaning of this kanji refers to the removal of extra things from a place or an object, and later evolved to the current meaning of "removing" or "eliminating."