Radical 17
Chinese character radical
title: "Radical 17" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["kangxi-radicals", "simplified-chinese-radicals"] description: "Chinese character radical" topic_path: "geography/china" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_17" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Chinese character radical ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox Kangxi radical"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| 17 | uni |
| meaning | receptacle |
| pny | kǎn |
| bopo | ㄎㄢˇ |
| wade | kʻan3 |
| jyutping | ham3 |
| yale | hom1 |
| poj | khám |
| cn | 凶字框 xiōngzìkuàng |
| 下三框 xiàsānkuāng | |
| onyomi | カン kan |
| jp | 凵繞/かんにょう kannyō |
| 受け箱/うけばこ ukebako | |
| 下箱/したばこ shitabako | |
| 函構/かんがまえ kangamae | |
| hang | 입벌릴 ip beolril |
| hanja | 감 gam |
| hanviet | khảm |
| :: |
|17|uni=51F5 |meaning= receptacle |pny= kǎn |bopo= ㄎㄢˇ |wade= kʻan3 |jyutping= ham3 |yale= hom1 |poj= khám |cn=凶字框 xiōngzìkuàng 下三框 xiàsānkuāng |onyomi= カン kan |jp= 凵繞/かんにょう kannyō 受け箱/うけばこ ukebako 下箱/したばこ shitabako 函構/かんがまえ kangamae |hang= 입벌릴 ip beolril |hanja= 감 gam |hanviet= khảm
Radical 17 or radical open box (凵部) is one of 23 of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of two strokes.
凵 is also the 20th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.
In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 23 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.
As for the similar radicals 22 匚 and 13 冂, the name of radical 17 is purely descriptive of its shape, 下三框 "lower three-sided frame".
Evolution
File:凵-oracle.svg|Oracle bone script character File:凵-bigseal.svg|Large seal script character File:凵-seal.svg|Small seal script character
Derived characters
::data[format=table]
| Strokes | Characters |
|---|---|
| +0 | 凵 |
| +2 | 凶 (bad, inauspicious) |
| +3 | 凷 凸 凹 出 (go out, send out) 击SC (=擊 - 手, to hit) |
| +4 | 凼 |
| +6 | 函SC/TC variant/函Kangxi/JP/KO variant (box) |
| +7 | 凾 (=函) |
| +10 | 凿SC (=鑿 - 金) |
| :: |
The radical does not occur as a character on its own. In combination, it historically takes meanings such as "open mouth", "box", "frame", "hole" or "receptacle".
Also derived from the radical are the Simplified Chinese characters including 击 "to hit", without any historical connection to the radical.
幽 "deep, dark" is derived from radical 46 (山 "mountain") rather than radical 17.
Literature
- Leyi Li: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993,
- KangXi: page 134, character 17
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::