Radical 208 (黽) is the 208th of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are traditionally used to index Chinese characters in dictionaries. The radical is composed of eight strokes and carries the meaning “frog” or, more generally, “amphibian.”
Character form
- Traditional form: 黽
- Simplified form: The same glyph is used in both traditional and simplified Chinese.
- Unicode: U+9EDD (CJK Unified Ideograph) and as a radical index component at U+2FCF in the CJK Radicals Supplement block.
Pronunciation
- Mandarin Chinese: mǐn (pinyin)
- Cantonese: maahm (Jyutping)
- Japanese Onyomi: bin; Kunyomi: none (the radical is used primarily for indexing)
- Korean Hanja: myeong
Lexicographic use
In the Kangxi Dictionary (1716), six characters are listed under radical 208. These characters are generally semantically related to amphibians, water, or the notion of “to hide” (as in the behavior of a frog). Examples include:
- 黾 (mǐn) – a variant of the radical itself, meaning “frog.”
- 黿 (yuán) – “large turtle” or “soft‑shelled turtle.”
Derived characters
Although the radical does not appear in a large number of characters, it functions as a semantic component in a small set of characters dealing with aquatic or amphibious concepts.
Indexing in modern dictionaries
Contemporary Chinese dictionaries that follow the “Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components” (汉字部首检字表) assign radical 208 the same indexing number (208) and use it to group relevant characters for lookup.
Etymology
The pictographic origin of 黽 depicts a crouching amphibian with outstretched limbs, reflecting the ancient Chinese practice of using stylized animal shapes to represent meaning.
Notes
- The radical is relatively rare compared with many other Kangxi radicals, and its usage is primarily academic or lexical rather than in everyday writing.
- In Unicode, the radical glyph for indexing purposes (U+2FCF) is distinct from the full character encoding (U+9EDD), allowing software to distinguish between radical indices and regular characters.