What ⺉ means
A knife-radical form for indexing characters.
Shang-era bone and bronze inscriptions show 刀 as a handled knife. It appears in small seal, a later Chinese script; the Han-era Shuowen Jiezi dictionary calls it a pictograph.
⺉ marks the component’s right-side position in radical indexes, not ordinary running text.
Is ⺉ the same as 刀 or 刂?
They are related forms, but serve different roles.
刀 stands alone; 刂 is the component at a character’s right edge. ⺉ is separate radical notation mapped to 刂.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does ⺉ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ⺉
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2E89, then Alt+X to get ⺉.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk radical knife two”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2e89, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⺉CSS
\2E89How do I type ⺉?
Use a Unicode character picker and search for U+2E89; an emoji keyboard will not find this CJK radical.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⺉
HTML hex
⺉
CSS content
content: "\2E89";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%BA%89
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.