扌 (tíshǒupáng) · side hand radical (variant of 手)

Meanings

1 side hand radical (variant of 手)
2 left form of the hand radical, Kangxi #64

Characters

Tips

usage

扌 on the left is one of the most reliable verb-of-physical-action signals in Chinese - holding, hitting, pushing, pulling, grabbing. It is the hand radical 手 squeezed to a slim three-stroke column so a phonetic can occupy the right half. Never appears as a standalone character.

history

扌 is the calligraphic compression of 手. The standalone pictograph shows splayed fingers and an arm; in side-position the fingers fuse into a top hook and the arm becomes a single vertical with one cross-tick, a brush gesture much faster to write yet still visually "hand-shaped".

usage

Hand-action cue: 打 (hit), 拿 (take / hold), 推 (push), 拉 (pull), 找 (search), 接 (receive), 把 (hold / object marker), 报 (report).

Radical

Hand Kangxi #64

One of the most productive action radicals. Strong clue that a character involves doing something with the hands: striking, holding, grasping, manipulating. Appears as 扌 on the left of characters (打, 拿, 把, 推, 找) and as 龵 on top in a few rare forms; the canonical 手 itself appears mostly as a bottom or right component (拳, 拜).

Forms

手 shǒu

Default 16 characters

扌 tíshǒupáng

Left 271 characters

龵 shǒu

Top 0 characters