CJK Radical Brush Two

⺻ is a form of the writing-brush radical, a component used to organise and look up Chinese characters. It belongs in radical tables and explanations of character structure. It is associated with 聿, an old character for a writing brush, but the two are different text characters.

Text symbol

What ⺻ means

The name comes from an ancient picture of a writing brush.

Early forms of 聿 in inscriptions on bones and bronze show a hand holding a brush. Such brushes carry ink in a tuft of hair and are used for writing and calligraphy.

A radical is a component under which a dictionary groups characters. ⺻ represents a form of the brush radical, numbered 129 in the traditional Kangxi system. “Two” distinguishes this form from another encoded brush-radical form; it does not mean two brushes.

Can I write ⺻ instead of 聿?

Use 聿 when you mean the written character.

⺻ lets a text discuss the radical itself. It is not a substitute for 聿 in a word or name. The separate encoding matters: a search for one need not find the other, even when a font makes them look similar.

Part of the collection

⼈

Chinese Radicals & Strokes

Don't confuse it with

⺺

CJK Radical Brush One

The separate Brush One radical sign, associated with 肀. ⺻ is Brush Two, associated with 聿.

⾀

Kangxi Radical Brush

The Kangxi Radical Brush symbol. It belongs to the same radical family but is a separate text character.

Questions people ask

Why does ⺻ show as a box on some devices?

Not every system ships a font for the CJK Radicals Supplement block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.