Radical 140 or radical grass () meaning "

grass Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family (biology), family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and spe ...

" is one of 29 of the 214

Kangxi radical The ''Kangxi'' radicals (), also known as ''Zihui'' radicals, are a set of 214 Chinese character radicals, radicals that were collated in the 18th-century ''Kangxi Dictionary'' to aid categorization of Chinese characters. They are primarily sor ...

s that are composed of 6

strokes Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop ...

. It transforms into when appearing at the top of a character or component. In the ''

Kangxi Dictionary The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing, considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters. Wanting ...

'' and in modern standard Traditional Chinese as used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, (with two horizontal strokes) consists of four strokes, while in Simplified Chinese and modern Japanese, (with a continuous horizontal stroke) consists of three strokes. In the ''

'' there are 1902 characters (out of 40,000) found under this

radical Radical (from Latin: ', root) may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Classical radicalism, the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and Latin America in the 19th century *Radical politics ...

, making it the most commonly used radical. , the upper component form of , is the 30th indexing component in the ''

Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components ''The Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components'' () is a lexicography, 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 ...

'' 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), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

dictionaries published in

mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

, while is listed as its associated indexing component.

Evolution

File:艸-seal.svg,

Small seal script The small seal script is an archaic script style of written Chinese. It developed within the state of Qin during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–256 BC), and was then promulgated across China in order to replace script varieties used i ...

character

Derived characters

Variant forms

This radical character is written differently in different languages. Traditionally, breaking the horizontal stroke in 艹 is optional in both printing and written forms. The ''

'' adopted the four-stroke form . In today's Simplified Chinese, only the three-stroke form is used; The four-stroke form is treated as an obsolete typeface form after the adoption of ''

xin zixing The ''xin zixing'' () are a set of Standard language, standardized Chinese character forms. It is based on the 1964 "List of character forms of Common Chinese characters for Publishing" () as compared to ''jiu zixing''. The standard is based on ...

''. In modern Traditional Chinese as used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, the four-stroke form is standard, while the three-stroke form is still overwhelmingly preferred in publications. In Japanese, only the three-stroke form is used for ''

jōyō kanji The are those kanji listed on the , officially announced by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The current List of jōyō kanji, list of 2,136 characters was issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the tōyō kanji, kanji, which ...

'' (commonly used Chinese characters); the three-stroke form is recommended for ''

hyōgai kanji , also known as , is a term for Japanese kanji outside the two major lists of kanji, which are taught in primary and secondary school, and the kanji, which are additional kanji that are officially allowed for use in personal names. The term ...

'', while the four-stroke form is listed as an acceptable "design difference" in ''Hyōgai Kanji Jitaihyō'' () and

JIS X 0208 JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. Th ...

. In addition, is derived from the

cursive Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...

form of 艹. 艹-torder.gif, Standard stroke order in Taiwan Chinese 艹-order.gif, Stroke order in Simplified Chinese and Japanese

Sinogram

The radical is also used as an independent

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

. It is one of the

kyōiku kanji The are kanji which Japanese elementary school students should learn from first through sixth grade. Also known as , these kanji are listed on the . The table is developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT). Although t ...

or kanji taught in elementary school in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It is a first grade kanji.

References

Kyōiku kanji

References

* KangXi:
page 1017
character 1 * Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 30638 * Dae Jaweon: page 1475, character 6 * Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 5, page 3172, character 1
Unihan data for U+8278
{{Simplified Chinese radicals 140 030