Radical 5 or radical second () meaning "second" is one of 6 of the 214
Kangxi radicals that are composed of only one
stroke. However, this radical is mainly used to categorize miscellaneous characters otherwise not belonging to any radical, mainly featuring a hook or fold, and 乙 is the character with the least amount of strokes.
In the
ancient Chinese cyclic character numeral system, 乙 represents the second
Celestial stem
The ten Heavenly Stems or Celestial Stems () are a Chinese system of ordinals that first appear during the Shang dynasty, c. 1250 BC, as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-period ritual as names for dead family mem ...
(天干 ''tiāngān'').
In the ''
Kangxi Dictionary
The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing ...
'', there are 42 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this
radical.
In
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
, along with other 14 associated indexing components, including , , etc., are affiliated to a new radical (), which is the 5th principal indexing component in the ''
Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components ''The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components'' () is a lexicographic tool used to order the Chinese characters in mainland China. The specification is also known as GF 0011-2009.
In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any ...
'' predominantly adopted by
Simplified Chinese
Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to:
Mathematics
Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example
* Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...
dictionaries.
[GF 0011-2009 汉字部首表 ( The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Component )] Usually, only several out of the 15 variant components are listed under radical in dictionary indexes.
Evolution
File:乙-oracle.svg, Oracle bone script
Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or Turtle shell#Plastron, turtle plastrons used in pyromancy, pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millen ...
character
File:乙-bronze.svg, Bronze script character
File:乙-bigseal.svg, Large seal script
The large seal script or great seal script () is a traditional reference to Chinese writing from before the Qin dynasty (i.e. before 221 BCE), and is now popularly understood to refer narrowly to the writing of the Western and early Eastern Zhou ...
character
File:乙-seal.svg, Small seal script character
Derived characters
In the
Unihan
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a feature s ...
Database, (
Japanese simplified form of ) falls under Radical 5 + 10 strokes, while other variants of (including Simplified Chinese ) fall under
Radical 213 ( "turtle"), causing an inconsistency. However, in most Japanese dictionaries, is treated as a variant of Radical 213 () and indexed Radical 213 + 0 strokes.
Literature
*
*
References
External links
Unihan Database - U+4E59
{{Simplified Chinese radicals
005
''005'' is a 1981 arcade game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings". It is one of the first examples of a ...
005
''005'' is a 1981 arcade game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings". It is one of the first examples of a ...