衤

衤 marks garments and textile actions - clothes, sewing, lining, layering. It is the clothing radical 衣 squeezed into a five-stroke column for side-by-side compounds. The classic learner’s pitfall: distinguishing 衤 (clothing, five strokes, extra dot) from the altar radical 礻 (sacred, four strokes, no dot). Never written alone.

衤 is the calligraphic compression of 衣, originally a pictograph of a garment with collar and sleeves. In left-position the body narrows to a vertical column and the sleeves collapse into the trailing strokes; the small dot at the bottom-right is the visual remnant that distinguishes 衤 from 礻.

Clothing/textile cue: 被 (quilt / passive marker), 衬 (lining / shirt), 袖 (sleeve), 补 (mend), 裤 (trousers), 裙 (skirt). Compare 礼 (with 礻, ritual) vs 衬 (with 衤, lining).