What ⽁ means
It labels the Kangxi radical for a light strike. A radical is a character component used to group or look up characters in traditional Chinese dictionaries. The related Han character 攴 carries the light-striking sense; 攴 and its variant 攵 appear as components in 改 (“change”) and 教 (“teach”).
Is ⽁ the same as 攴 or 攵? No. ⽁ is the dedicated Kangxi-radical symbol; 攴 is the related Han character, and 攵 is its variant or component form. They are related, but they are not interchangeable.
Technical and lexicographic: ⽁ marks a dictionary radical, not ordinary prose.
For Chinese text, use the intended character form, 攴 or 攵, not ⽁.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ⽁ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Kangxi Radicals block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
More like this
11
How to type or find ⽁
- Search it as
- 攴 · 攵 · Kangxi radical · radical rap symbol · U+2F41
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⽁\2F41Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.