音読み and 訓読み With No Words Associated

Question

Disclaimer: I’m a beginning student. On a number of occasions I have noticed that kanji listed at Jisho.org may have an 音読み or 訓読み for which Jisho lists no associated word. For example, 号 is listed as having the 訓読み ⎡さけぶ⎦, but Jisho does not list any word pronounced that way and using the kanji 号. Why?

The question isn’t only curiosity; vocabulary with a kanji’s different readings make it easier to remember the readings. And please understand that my question uses 号 as one example; I'm hoping for a broader explanation.

Answer 1

When something like this happens, you're probably encountering a rare reading that's not worth learning at all. For what it's worth, as a native Japanese speaker, I wasn't aware that 号 could be read that way (I only knew 叫ぶ as the kanji for さけぶ "to scream").

Kanji readings, especially kun-readings, were not very standardized in the past, and you may come across many obsolete kun-readings while reading older materials. According to this kanji quiz, 号ぶ was used at least in works of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916). It's a dictionary's job to include such rare words and readings, but it often fails to tell you which are common and which are not. Even a large dictionary does not cover all rare readings, anyway. If you're still a beginner, you should not pay too much attention to kanji and readings outside the jōyō kanji list.

See also: Why do dictionaries differ so much in terms of spelling and is there an established standard for how a word should be written in contemporary text?