What ⺌ means
⺌ shows the upper form of the “small” radical.
A radical is a component used to organize characters in dictionaries. Chinese characters are used in Chinese and Japanese, and also in Korean as hanja. Their components can change shape depending on where they sit: compare 小 with the three strokes at the top of 尚.
The separate sign ⺌ lets you name or display that shape without writing a whole character. Seeing this component does not mean that the whole character means “small,” or that a dictionary necessarily files it under 小.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Worth knowing
- 小 is recorded in Shang-dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions and Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. Those ancient forms belong to 小; they are not attestations of the separate sign ⺌.
Questions people ask
2Why do I see a box instead of ⺌?
Your font may lack this sign. If no available fallback font supplies it, a missing-character box can appear. A font covering CJK radicals can display it.
Why did ⺌ become 小 in my text?
A text-conversion tool may have replaced the radical sign with its corresponding ordinary character. Some tools do this for compatibility; the replacement loses the distinction between the component form and 小.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⺌
- Search it as
- small radical · 小 radical · CJK radical · small radical upper form
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⺌\2E8CCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.