What ⼒ means
It marks a lookup component, not the everyday word “power.” In traditional radical-and-stroke lookup, ⼒ is radical 19: it groups characters by a shared component, then remaining strokes narrow the search.
The older graph behind 力 appears in ancient Chinese inscriptions on oracle bones—bones and shells used for divination—and bronze objects. Its shape has competing explanations: a plow, or the human sinews described in Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary. The 214-radical system took shape in Zihui in 1615; the Kangxi Dictionary adopted it in 1716.
Technical dictionary notation, rather than a conversational reaction about power.
Use 力 for the ordinary character; ⼒ marks the radical.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ⼒ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
11
How to type or find ⼒
- Also called
- radical 19 · power radical · 力部
- Search it as
- ⼒ · 力 · u+2f12 · 2f12
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⼒\2F12Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.