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| 示 | ||
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| 示 (U+793A) "ancestor, veneration" | ||
| Pronunciations | ||
| Pinyin: | shì | |
| Bopomofo: | ㄕˋ | |
| Gwoyeu Romatzyh: | shyh | |
| Wade–Giles: | shih4 | |
| Cantonese Yale: | sih | |
| Jyutping: | si6 | |
| Japanese Kana: | シ shi (on'yomi) しめ-す shime-su (kun'yomi) | |
| Sino-Korean: | 시 si | |
| Names | ||
| Chinese name(s): | (Left) 示字旁 shìzìpáng (Bottom) 示字底 shìzìdǐ | |
| Japanese name(s): | しめす shimesu 示偏/しめすへん shimesuhen ネ偏/ねへん nehen | |
| Hangul: | 보일 boil | |
| Stroke order animation | ||
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Radical 113 or radical spirit (示部) meaning ancestor or veneration is number 113 out of the 214 Kangxi radicals. It is one of the 23 radicals composed of 5 strokes. When appearing at the left side of a character, the radical transforms into 礻 (consisting of 4 strokes) in modern Chinese and Japanese jōyō kanji.
The compound form 礻 always appears in the left half of the characters.
In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 213 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.
示 is also the 100th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China, with the left component form 礻 being its associated indexing component.
The character 示 represents an altar or offering table, the top stroke depicting the offered goods. In the oracle bone script, the table has a T shape.
Semantically, the sign suggests a relation to anything connected with animism in traditional Chinese religion, such as 祭 "to sacrifice, to practice ancestor veneration", ultimately composed of the sign for meat 肉 and the sign for a hand 手 above the altar character, as it iconographically means "hand placing meat on an altar". The sign 祟 for "evil spirit" originally referred to misfortune caused by malevolent spirits.
In 禁 (jìn) "to forbid, restrict, restrain", the 林 (lín) above the radical has only phonetic significance (rebus writing). Similarly, 神 "spirit" has radical 113 plus 申 (shēn) as a phonetic marker. 祖 "ancestor" on the other hand has radical 113 plus 且, a pictograph of a stand with shelves for offerings to ancestors.
Some signs including the radical have no connection with spirits or animism and are placed in the category purely on formal grounds, such as 票 "ticket" which originally had radical 火 rather than 示.