Kangxi Radical Knife

It labels the knife radical in character indexes and encoding discussions. Unicode distinguishes this radical symbol from the ordinary ideograph 刀, so choose by role rather than appearance.

The knife radical's history begins with the older graph 刀, attested in Shang oracle-bone inscriptions and late-Shang bronzes. Later forms appear in manuscripts from the ancient Chu state, Qin bamboo slips, and seal script, a formal style used for seals and inscriptions. The early Chinese dictionary Shuowen Jiezi describes 刀 as a picture of a knife and says knife-class characters follow it.

The Kangxi Dictionary, completed in 1716, organized characters under radicals and then by their remaining strokes. That arrangement made a radical useful as a lookup key; Japanese dictionaries of kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) later adopted the same method.

How do I type ⼑ instead of 刀?

Enter U+2F11 directly through Unicode-aware input. Use a Unicode picker or source editor when the exact radical code point matters; typing ordinary 刀 gives a different character.

NFKC and NFKD are compatibility-normalization forms: they can map ⼑ to 刀. NFC preserves the distinction.

Why does ⼑ look like 刀?

It is a radical symbol tied to the ordinary ideograph's shape.

The Kangxi radical block gives this standalone index symbol a representative form. Inside characters, related knife components can differ by position: ⺈ is the top-position form, while 刂 is used on the right. Each is encoded separately, so neither is another spelling of ⼑.