<blockquote>
<p>For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the ordinary practical purposes of reading and writing there is no distinction, even when Chinese is used as a first language.</p>
<p>In some fonts the distinction is only visible in the radicals themselves (匚 and 匸), and not when they appear as components of characters. In other fonts there is sometimes a top-left protrusion with a bottom-left rounding for the component 匸.</p>
<p>Here are the characters in <a href="https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OP's original picture</a>, unsemantically enlarged using <code>&lt;h1&gt;</code>:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1>匣汇匮 区匿匹</h1>
</blockquote>
<p>While most Chinese-only dictionaries I have seen do still retain the distinction,
I have with me <a href="https://www.cp1897.com.hk/product_info.php?BookId=9620701402" rel="nofollow noreferrer">黃港生 (1991)《商務新字典》 (ISBN: 9620701402)</a> in which the two radicals are actually merged together:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/KoLvPm.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/KoLvPm.jpg" alt="Dictionary listing with radicals merged" /></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>But maybe there is some situation where this distinction is important.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/#SortingAlgorithm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Radical-stroke sorting</a> (e.g. <a href="https://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/26610">/a/26610</a>), characters with Radical 22 (匚) will appear before those with Radical 23 (匸).</p>
<p>Other than this, the only people who will care about the distinction are pedantic calligraphers, or lexicographers arguing about etymology.</p>
<p><a href="https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&amp;char=%E5%8C%9A" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Radical 22 (匚)</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>《說文》受物之器。 A vessel that bears objects.</li>
<li>《六書正譌》本古方字，借爲受物器。 Originally the olden character Square (方), borrowed as [the character for] object-bearing vessel.</li>
<li>《六書故》匚，器之爲方者也。 匚, a vessel's being a square.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&amp;char=%E5%8C%B8" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Radical 23 (匸)</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>《說文》衺徯，有所俠藏也。从乚，上有一覆之。 [A sleeve-pocket?]*, having that which is clasped in concealment. From Concealment (乚), having a One (一) covering it above.</li>
<li>《廣韻》匸：有所藏也。 匸: having that which is concealed.</li>
<li>《精薀》匚，受物之器也。匸，物也。匸與匚形近似而意相反。 匚, a vessel that bears objects. 匸, concealing objects. 匸 and 匚 have similar shapes but opposite meanings.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Very generally speaking, <a href="https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&amp;rad=22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">characters with Radical 22 (匚)</a> have box- or container-related etymologies, while <a href="https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&amp;rad=23" rel="nofollow noreferrer">characters with Radical 23 (匸)</a> are related to concealment.</p>
<hr />
<p>* I'm not certain what 衺徯 means. &quot;Sleeve-pocket&quot; is a guess.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-26T14:46:14.953Z
2020-11-26T15:46:36.960Z
2020-11-26T15:46:36.960Z
yawnoc
<p>Sort of in a rush here so just some hints. First, I'd say the suggestion that 'their pinyin is different, so they must be kept apart' is, well, not wrong and not right. Neither of the two box/enclosure characters is used by itself in the modern language, so the situation never arises. There are also artificial radicals that were never used by themselves and were only stipulated to explain the formation of characters and/or serve as dictionary headings. These may well be ones, and I suspect that when you go and study the small seal forms of modern characters you will find a more pronounced difference in shapes than is visible in the modern forms. This is analogous to what happened to 月 which is the modern conflation of at least: 月 moon, 舟 boat, and 肉 meat/flesh. There have been numerous attempts in history to undo these and other conflations, mostly by requiring people to observe minuscule variations in how the strokes are put together. None of these attempts was ever widely followed, and the conflations have stuck.</p>
<p>One practical way to decide whether I or you should care about the 'box' radical being different from the 'enclosure' radical would be to glance over the historical record of how calligraphers treated these; for example, by looking at <a href="http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/531A.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/531A.html</a> and <a href="http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/5338.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/5338.html</a> you can already tell that at least this source gives almost identical details for both radicals. I'd then recommend to look at what's listed in 书法 section of that site for a number of characters that are sorted under both radicals and see whether historically people have made any discernible difference between the two. If not, I'd say you're free to do the same.</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong> Comparing <a href="http://www.sfds.cn/5323/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">匣 Rad. 22</a> and <a href="http://www.sfds.cn/5340/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">區 Rad. 23</a> makes it, IMO, clear that (1) there's no very clear distinction between the two made even in the early forms; (2) conversely, a number of stroke order and stroke shapes is used for either radical, some writers preferring to write top, inside, then left-bottom, others using top, left, inside, bottom order.</p>
<p><strong>Edit 2</strong> I just counter-checked with 《新書源》（二玄社，東京，2009, 2013, pp114ff） and I'd go even one step further here. I could not locate any source that has the distinction the 說文解字 makes between the two radicals, namely, the straight end of the bottom line for rad. 22, and the drooping end of the same for rad. 23. There are a few forms predating the 說文 but none has a drooping line. Based on this evidence I suspect that 許慎 Xu Shen is responsible for introducing this distinction, and it wouldn't be the only time that there are allegedly authentic seal forms that are somehow only represented by this single dictionary. It is also known that a few character forms that we today regularly distinguish were kept apart only by the late Han and used indistinctly before that, an example being 人 and 入, which are likewise only separated by the tiniest of hints (and observe that 入 violates a principle of 楷書 calligraphy, so even this may be an artificial distinction, albeit one that gained currency).</p>
<p>Xu Shen may have had good reason to separate 匚 and 匸, his work being more of a student's rote memo book than a work of epigraphy or etymology proper. Maybe in his day it was part of being an educated man to be aware of a difference although both looked identical. Be that as it may, the distinction never caught on, and seeing how very few characters are grouped under either of these two radicals, I think one can best ignore the distinction for all practical matters.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-28T00:11:11.693Z
`It is also known that a few character forms that we today regularly distinguish were kept apart only by the late Han and used indistinctly before that` do you mean *...indistinctly **after** that*? It's generally the inherited bamboo script shapes that merge forms together; in inscriptions, they are generally distinct. 人 and 入 were artificially merged due to calligraphy, and keeping them apart now is a return to the old inscription styles.
dROOOze
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-26T12:48:44.970Z
2020-11-27T09:35:58.027Z
2020-11-27T09:35:58.027Z
John Frazer
<p>At the LTL Mandarin office in Beijing, there is a poster of the Chinese radicals, in which we find the <a href="https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">匚</a> and <a href="https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=23" rel="nofollow noreferrer">匸</a> radicals:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4m.jpg" alt="a photo of 匚 and 匸 in a poster" /></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Until seeing this poster, I didn't realize these were different.  This leads me to the question...</p>
<p><strong>Question</strong>: For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?</p>
<p>They are <em>so</em> similar that perhaps only a calligrapher might consider it worthwhile splitting this hair.  But maybe there is some situation where this distinction is important.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-26T11:17:49.330Z
their meanings are close enough that you could ignore the difference but their pinyin is not the same and that would certainly cause problems if you were to treat them as the same
小奥利奥
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-03T18:05:14.957Z
I dislike the font used in the poster. I don't really see the difference between them. I prefer it if they used a curved stroke for 匹
Daniel Cheung
<difference><radicals>
For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?
# For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-11-26)

At the LTL Mandarin office in Beijing, there is a poster of the Chinese radicals, in which we find the [匚](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=22) and [匸](https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=23) radicals:

> [![a photo of 匚 and 匸 in a poster](https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4m.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4.jpg)

Until seeing this poster, I didn't realize these were different. This leads me to the question...

**Question**: For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?

They are *so* similar that perhaps only a calligrapher might consider it worthwhile splitting this hair. But maybe there is some situation where this distinction is important.

**Tags:** difference, radicals
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: their meanings are close enough that you could ignore the difference but their pinyin is not the same and that would certainly cause problems if you were to treat them as the same  
> **username_2**: I dislike the font used in the poster. I don't really see the difference between them. I prefer it if they used a curved stroke for 匹  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2020-11-26. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

> For a student studying Chinese as a second language, is there any practical difference between the radicals 匚 and 匸?

For the ordinary practical purposes of reading and writing there is no distinction, even when Chinese is used as a first language.

In some fonts the distinction is only visible in the radicals themselves (匚 and 匸), and not when they appear as components of characters. In other fonts there is sometimes a top-left protrusion with a bottom-left rounding for the component 匸.

Here are the characters in [OP's original picture](https://i.sstatic.net/IzSL4.jpg), unsemantically enlarged using `#`:

> # 匣汇匮 区匿匹

While most Chinese-only dictionaries I have seen do still retain the distinction,
I have with me [黃港生 (1991)《商務新字典》 (ISBN: 9620701402)](https://www.cp1897.com.hk/product_info.php?BookId=9620701402) in which the two radicals are actually merged together:

[![Dictionary listing with radicals merged](https://i.sstatic.net/KoLvPm.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/KoLvPm.jpg)

> But maybe there is some situation where this distinction is important.

In [Radical-stroke sorting](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/#SortingAlgorithm) (e.g. [/a/26610](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/26610)), characters with Radical 22 (匚) will appear before those with Radical 23 (匸).

Other than this, the only people who will care about the distinction are pedantic calligraphers, or lexicographers arguing about etymology.

[Radical 22 (匚)](https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=%E5%8C%9A):

> * 《說文》受物之器。 A vessel that bears objects.
> * 《六書正譌》本古方字，借爲受物器。 Originally the olden character Square (方), borrowed as [the character for] object-bearing vessel.
> * 《六書故》匚，器之爲方者也。 匚, a vessel's being a square.

[Radical 23 (匸)](https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=%E5%8C%B8):

> * 《說文》衺徯，有所俠藏也。从乚，上有一覆之。 [A sleeve-pocket?]\*, having that which is clasped in concealment. From Concealment (乚), having a One (一) covering it above.
> * 《廣韻》匸：有所藏也。 匸: having that which is concealed.
> * 《精薀》匚，受物之器也。匸，物也。匸與匚形近似而意相反。 匚, a vessel that bears objects. 匸, concealing objects. 匸 and 匚 have similar shapes but opposite meanings.

Very generally speaking, [characters with Radical 22 (匚)](https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&rad=22) have box- or container-related etymologies, while [characters with Radical 23 (匸)](https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&rad=23) are related to concealment.

---

\* I'm not certain what 衺徯 means. "Sleeve-pocket" is a guess.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2020-11-26. Score: 3

Sort of in a rush here so just some hints. First, I'd say the suggestion that 'their pinyin is different, so they must be kept apart' is, well, not wrong and not right. Neither of the two box/enclosure characters is used by itself in the modern language, so the situation never arises. There are also artificial radicals that were never used by themselves and were only stipulated to explain the formation of characters and/or serve as dictionary headings. These may well be ones, and I suspect that when you go and study the small seal forms of modern characters you will find a more pronounced difference in shapes than is visible in the modern forms. This is analogous to what happened to 月 which is the modern conflation of at least: 月 moon, 舟 boat, and 肉 meat/flesh. There have been numerous attempts in history to undo these and other conflations, mostly by requiring people to observe minuscule variations in how the strokes are put together. None of these attempts was ever widely followed, and the conflations have stuck.

One practical way to decide whether I or you should care about the 'box' radical being different from the 'enclosure' radical would be to glance over the historical record of how calligraphers treated these; for example, by looking at <http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/531A.html> and <http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/5338.html> you can already tell that at least this source gives almost identical details for both radicals. I'd then recommend to look at what's listed in 书法 section of that site for a number of characters that are sorted under both radicals and see whether historically people have made any discernible difference between the two. If not, I'd say you're free to do the same.

**Edit** Comparing [匣 Rad. 22](http://www.sfds.cn/5323/) and [區 Rad. 23](http://www.sfds.cn/5340/) makes it, IMO, clear that (1) there's no very clear distinction between the two made even in the early forms; (2) conversely, a number of stroke order and stroke shapes is used for either radical, some writers preferring to write top, inside, then left-bottom, others using top, left, inside, bottom order.

**Edit 2** I just counter-checked with 《新書源》（二玄社，東京，2009, 2013, pp114ff） and I'd go even one step further here. I could not locate any source that has the distinction the 說文解字 makes between the two radicals, namely, the straight end of the bottom line for rad. 22, and the drooping end of the same for rad. 23. There are a few forms predating the 說文 but none has a drooping line. Based on this evidence I suspect that 許慎 Xu Shen is responsible for introducing this distinction, and it wouldn't be the only time that there are allegedly authentic seal forms that are somehow only represented by this single dictionary. It is also known that a few character forms that we today regularly distinguish were kept apart only by the late Han and used indistinctly before that, an example being 人 and 入, which are likewise only separated by the tiniest of hints (and observe that 入 violates a principle of 楷書 calligraphy, so even this may be an artificial distinction, albeit one that gained currency).

Xu Shen may have had good reason to separate 匚 and 匸, his work being more of a student's rote memo book than a work of epigraphy or etymology proper. Maybe in his day it was part of being an educated man to be aware of a difference although both looked identical. Be that as it may, the distinction never caught on, and seeing how very few characters are grouped under either of these two radicals, I think one can best ignore the distinction for all practical matters.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: `It is also known that a few character forms that we today regularly distinguish were kept apart only by the late Han and used indistinctly before that` do you mean *...indistinctly **after** that*? It's generally the inherited bamboo script shapes that merge forms together; in inscriptions, they are generally distinct. 人 and 入 were artificially merged due to calligraphy, and keeping them apart now is a return to the old inscription styles.  

---

