字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE摭續190 (商)
Oracle bone and small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Bronze: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The oracle bone, bronze and seal stages show 攴, not 攵 itself.
部首Radical · in Action & Movement
攵 to strike, hit, fold
ぼくづくり bokuzukuri
4 strokesRadical of 17 kanjiPart of 27
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
A hand (又) holding a tool of some sort (possibly a weapon or whip), meaning “to hit”. The tool later corrupted into the phonetic component 卜.
Source: Wiktionary, 攴 (rev. 92733357), the entry for the full form, CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Whack! A hand with a stick is ready to take command. This radical is all about force, guidance, and making things happen in the physical world. Whether it’s hitting a nail, folding a cloth, or guiding a student, it represents the active, "doing" part of a kanji character.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Indicates physical force, striking, guidance, transformation through action, or the process of making a change.
What it grows into
- 改reformationカイ · あらためる
巳sound + 攵
In the oracle bone script, a phono-semantic compound (形聲): phonetic 巳 + semantic 攴.
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 教teachキョウ · おしえる
- 放set freeホウ · はなす
Every kanji with 攵 as its radical
All 17 kanji