Kangxi Radical Feather

It marks the feather radical in character dictionaries. A radical is the part a dictionary uses to group characters; ⽻ points to the entries filed under 羽. It is a cataloguing symbol, not the ordinary character used to write words.

羽 is a pictograph for a bird’s long feathers; oracle-bone, bronze, and seal-script forms are recorded. The Kangxi Dictionary, an 18th-century Chinese reference work, established the familiar 214-radical system. Traditional dictionaries also use 羽 for feather-made objects, ritual dance plumes, the feathers at an arrow’s tail, birds, banners, letters and messengers, followers, and one note in traditional Chinese music. Japanese radical indexes label 羽 はね, the Japanese word for “feather.”

Is ⽻ the same as 羽?

They are related forms, but Unicode encodes them separately. ⽻ is the symbol from the Kangxi Radicals block; 羽 is the ordinary Chinese character for feather and can also appear as a character component. Unicode maps ⽻ to 羽, while its standard says radical symbols should not be used as ordinary characters. The chart’s representative form for ⽻ follows the Kangxi Dictionary; fonts may draw 羽 according to regional conventions.

The sequence “⽻ becomes 羽” describes a compatibility-normalization change: Unicode’s NFKC and NFKD forms fold the radical symbol into the ordinary character. This erases their distinction in processed text. In ordinary Chinese or Japanese writing, use 羽; use ⽻ when a radical index needs that separate symbol.