歹
contributes the sense of death · Kangxi radical 78
contributes the sense of death, dead bodies and bare bones, hence dying, killing, and disaster
The old graph showed a piece of stripped bone — the remains of a body after the flesh was gone — drawn as a short bone shaft with a jagged broken end. Written fuller as 歺, it was squeezed into today's four-stroke 歹: the top horizontal and short slash are the broken end, and the 夕-like part below is the body of the bone. That is why the characters built on it deal with dying, being killed, and ruin, as in 殂, 殃 and 殡. In a few characters, such as 列 and 夙, the left-hand shape only looks like 歹 and comes from something else.
歹 at a glance
- Meaning
- contributes the sense of death
- Strokes
- 4
- Characters
- 31
- Role
- Contributes meaning
- Kangxi radical
- 78
Characters with 歹 (23 of 31)
HSK 4 · 2
HSK 6 · 2
Beyond HSK · 17
Frequently asked questions
What does the component 歹 mean?
歹 means "contributes the sense of death". In the characters that contain it, it contributes meaning.
How many Chinese characters contain 歹?
31 characters in this dictionary contain 歹, including ones at HSK 4, HSK 5, HSK 6.
Is 歹 a radical?
Yes — 歹 is Kangxi radical 78, one of the 214 traditional indexing radicals used to organise Chinese dictionaries.
How many strokes does 歹 have?
歹 is written in 4 strokes.