Radical 51 or radical dry () meaning "" or "" is one of 31 out of the total 214

Kangxi radical The 214 Kangxi radicals (), also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals () of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditi ...

s written with three strokes. There are only nine characters derived from this radical, and some modern dictionaries have discontinued its use as a section header. In such characters that comprise 干 as a component, it mostly takes a purely phonetic role, as in "liver" (which falls under radical 130 肉 "meat"). is also the 27st indexing component in the '' Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components'' predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.

Evolution

File:干-oracle.svg,

Oracle bone script Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or turtle plastrons used in pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millennium BC, and is the earliest kno ...

character File:干-bronze.svg,

Bronze script Chinese bronze inscriptions, also commonly referred to as bronze script or bronzeware script, are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on ritual bronzes such as ''zhōng'' bells and '' dǐng'' tripodal cauldrons from the Shang dynasty (2nd mi ...

character File:干-bigseal.svg, Large Seal Script character File:干-seal.svg,

Small Seal Script The small seal script (), or Qin script (, ''Qínzhuàn''), is an archaic form of Chinese calligraphy. It was standardized and promulgated as a national standard by the government of Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Chinese Qin dynasty. Name ...

character In origin, the character may depict either a pestle or a

shield A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand, which may or may not be strapped to the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry or projectiles such as arrows, by means of a ...

. It can be traced to the seal script.

Derived characters

In simplified Chinese

As a character (not a radical), has risen to new importance, and even notoriety due to the 20th-century Chinese writing reform. In simplified Chinese, takes the place of a number of other characters with the phonetic value ' or ', e.g. of "dry" or "trunk, body", so that may today take a wide variety of meanings. The high frequency and polysemy of the character poses a serious problem for Chinese translation software. The word ' "tree trunk; to do" (rarely also "human body"), rendered as in simplified Chinese, acquired the meaning of "to

fuck ''Fuck'' is an English-language expletive. It often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to aro ...

" in Chinese slang. Notoriously, the 2002 edition of the widespread

Jinshan Ciba PowerWord () is a collection of Chinese, English and bilingual dictionaries and supporting proprietary software, published on CD-ROM in China by Kingsoft. Originally produced for the Microsoft Windows platform, it is now available for Mac OS X, iP ...

Chinese-to-English dictionary for the Jinshan Kuaiyi translation software rendered every occurrence of as "fuck", resulting in a large number of signs with irritating English translations throughout China, often mistranslating ' "dried" as in "dried fruit" in supermarkets as "fuck the fruits" or similar.Victor Mair
The Etiology and Elaboration of a Flagrant Mistranslation

Language Log ''Language Log'' is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search fr ...

, December 2007.

Literature

* *Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993, *Rick Harbaugh, ''Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary'', Yale University Press (1998),

References

External links

Unihan Database - U+5E72
{{Simplified Chinese radicals 051