Evolution: Radical is a list of symbols generated by analyzing the structure and meaning of glyphs. Radical was initiated by Xu Shen, a famous Confucian scholar and philologist in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Radicals first appeared in Shuo Wen Jie Zi compiled by Xu Shen. Chinese characters are arranged on the basis of the six methods of Chinese characters, and only characters with the same initial stroke or glyph are arranged on the same radical. After Shuowen Jiezi, Linzi and Leipian all followed this style.
Current root:
The popular radical 2 14 originated from the dictionary compiled by Mei in the 43rd year of Wanli in Ming Dynasty (16 15). Vocabulary absorbs the useful experience of predecessors and improves it. Part 2 14 is divided into twelve episodes according to the stroke order and twelve branches such as Zi, Ugly, Yin and Mao. For difficult words, the dictionary lists them one by one according to the number of strokes, indicating which department they belong to, and supplements the dictionary at the beginning of the volume. At this point, a character retrieval method with strokes as the core was formally formed, and this method was adopted in later large-scale word books. Lexicon boldly integrates the radicals that are often seen in previous dictionaries, and there are too few words. The birth of this dictionary makes it much easier to look up the radicals.
Relationship with radicals: radicals are also radicals, which are a special kind of "radicals" and are used as the basis for arranging and searching Chinese characters. The scope of radicals is smaller than that of radicals, which means that radicals must be radicals and have the function of font classification, but radicals are not necessarily radicals. For example, there are "Qi" and "Er" on the radical of "You", and only "Qi" on the radical. Except for "one" and "three", radical is not necessarily radical. The concept of radical is different from radical. Radical is a part-of-speech title determined in the dictionary to classify Chinese characters, which is generated by analyzing the font structure. Radicals in dictionaries are mostly represented by ideographic radicals of Chinese characters. Radical is the structural unit of combined Chinese characters, and it is a word-forming unit with the function of combined Chinese characters. Radical is defined from the perspective of application function and radical is defined from the perspective of word formation.