Kangxi Radical Ice

No. ⼎ is the radical sign; 冫 is the ordinary component form.

An inscription on a bronze object shows a form of 仌 by the late Shang or early Western Zhou. The Han-era Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary, explains 仌 as ice or freezing water and compares its shape to water congealing.

A compressed side form became the ordinary ice component 冫; ⼎ is the dedicated symbol used to index that radical in the Kangxi system.

What does the ice radical do?

It usually signals cold, freezing, or congealing.

The component appears most often on the left; in 冬, it sits at the bottom. Names vary by language: Mandarin bīng (“ice”), Japanese にすい or 二水 (“two water”), and Korean 이수변 (“two-water side”).

Treat it as a clue to cold, freezing, or congealing, not a complete definition of the character that contains it.

How do I type the exact radical ⼎?

⼎ is the index sign; 冫 is the ordinary component.

Cangjie, a Chinese character input method, has 戈一 as an input sequence for 冫; it does not select ⼎.

Unicode compatibility processing may substitute the radical symbol with its corresponding ideograph, leaving a similar display while changing exact-text matching. Use ⼎ when a process requires this exact symbol; use 冫 for the ordinary component.