Radical Knowledge Introduction

Here are some signs indicating different sections in a supermarket:

If you do not know their meanings, do not worry. After studying the following radicals, you will be able to guess their meanings.

水 is a character radical which means water. It has three derivations: 氵, 冫, and 氺. Characters that contain these radicals are usually related to water. Does 冫 indicate less water? Please check our examples on the right.

木 is a character radical which means wood or tree. It has one derivation: 朩. Characters that contain these radicals usually describe ligneous plants, the fruits of ligneous plants and things that are made of ligneous plants. Please check our examples on the right.

艹 is a non-character radical. Characters that contain this radical usually describe herbaceous plants, the fruits of herbaceous plants and things that are made of herbaceous plants. Please check our examples on the right.

鱼 is a character radical which means fish. Characters that contain this radical are mostly related to fish. Please check our examples on the right.

匚 is a character radical which means container in ancient Chinese. Characters containing this radical usually indicate that one is contained in another. Please check our examples on the right.

Check Your Guess

After learning the radicals above, you might be able to understand the meanings of these signs. Please click on the signs to check whether your guess was correct.