CJK Radical Second Two

Use Unicode hex input to enter this exact radical character.

In Word on Windows, type 2E83 and press Alt+X; if it follows other hexadecimal text, select the code first. In GNOME, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 2e83, then press Space or Enter.

Both methods enter ⺃ itself instead of substituting related 乙 or 乚.

What is ⺃ used for?

It marks a component form of radical 乙 in CJK references.

Early forms of 乙 appear in Shang-era oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions: early writing carved on bone, and inscriptions on bronze objects. The oracle-bone stage dates to around 1250–1050 BCE; ⺃ is a much later computer encoding of one component form.

Radical indexes group characters by a recurring component, then sort them by remaining strokes. The Chinese dictionaries Zihui (1615) and Kangxi Dictionary (1716) used radical-and-stroke lookup. Ordinary 乙 also has lexical senses in Chinese and Japanese, including second rank, a list marker, or bent growth; in Chinese it is the second sign in a traditional ten-sign cycle. Those meanings belong to 乙, not ⺃.

What does ⺃ mean when sent alone?

Usually it is a glyph sample or a dictionary lookup clue.

In a font, radical, or character-lookup discussion, read it as technical notation. In a context-free message, ask the sender rather than assigning the ordinary meanings of 乙.