字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE前6.49.3 合17067
Oracle bone and bronze: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The oracle bone, bronze and seal stages show 火, not 灬 itself.
部首Radical · in Nature & Elements
灬 fire (4 dots)
れっか rekka
4 strokesRadical of 13 kanjiPart of 20
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
Pictographic representation of a fire. Written as 灬 when at the bottom of a character, but still seen in the original form in the character 灸.
Source: Wiktionary, 火 (rev. 94507178), the entry for the full form, CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“These four dots are flames under a cooking pot! When you see 灬 at the bottom of a kanji, imagine a fire heating something from below.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Indicates heating, cooking, or being affected by fire
What it grows into
- 然sort of thingゼン · しか
肰sound + 灬
To burn. The derivative 燃 preserves the original word.
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 煮boilシャ · にる
- 熱heatネツ · あつい
埶sound + 灬
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
Every kanji with 灬 as its radical
All 13 kanji