The kanji 戦 symbolizes "war," "battle," "fight," or "to wage war." It encapsulates the idea of conflict, struggle, and the act of engaging in combat. It can refer to both physical battles and metaphorical struggles.

・On-yomi (音読み): セン (sen) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): いくさ (ikusa)

⚫︎ 戦争 Translation: War ⚫︎ 戦闘 Translation: Combat; Battle ⚫︎ 戦う Translation: To fight; To battle

The kanji 戦 is a phono-semantic compound. The left side is the radical 戈 (か, ka), meaning "spear" or "weapon." The right side is 戋, which originally represented a small object or a sound, and it also functions phonetically here, providing the sound "sen." The combination of a weapon radical with a phonetic component related to "small" indicates a situation involving weapons and a sense of "struggle" or "conflict." The original meaning was close combat with spears. Over time, the character evolved to represent broader forms of conflict.