Radical 194

"鬼" redirects here. For other uses, see 鬼 (disambiguation).

鬼
Radical 194 (U+2FC1)
鬼 (U+9B3C) "ghost, demon"
Pinyin:	guǐ
Bopomofo:	ㄍㄨㄟˇ
Wade–Giles:	kuei3
Jyutping:	gwai2
Cantonese Yale:	gwai2
Hiragana:	キ, おに ki, oni
Kanji:	鬼 oni 鬼繞 kinyō
Hangul:	귀신 gwisin
Sino-Korean:	귀 gwi

Radical 194 (鬼 Unicode U+9B3C, pinyin guǐ meaning "ghost or demon") is one of eight out of the total 214 Kangxi radicals written with ten strokes.

The character is historically composed of 儿 "legs", 田 representing a large demon's head and a curl looking similar to 厶 taken to represent a swirl of vapour, or a demon's tail. The character can be traced to the oracle bone script, where it depicts a man kneeling on a monster head.

Most of the characters derived from the radical have meanings related to ghosts or souls, including 魔 "devil, demon", 魑 "black magic", 魘 "nightmare", 魄 "soul". In some signs, however, the radical is present purely as a phonetic marker, for example in 魏, the State of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period.

Derived characters

seal script character

strokes	characters
+00	鬼
+03	鬽
+04	鬾 鬿 魀 魁 魂
+05	魃 魄 魅 魆
+06	魇
+07	魈 魉
+08	魊 魋 魌 魍 魎 魏
+10	魐
+11	魑 魒 魓 魔
+12	魕 魖
+14	魗 魘 魙

Literature

• Fazzioli, Edoardo. Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0896597741. 
• Li, Leyi: “Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases”. Beijing 1993, ISBN 978-7561902042
• Harbaugh, Rick, Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, Yale University Press (1998), ISBN 9780966075007.[1]
• Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth (江伊莉), 甲骨文的“鬼”与假面具 (The Gui-Spirit in Oracle Bone Inscriptions), International Conference Celebrating the 95th Anniversary of the Discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions", Anyang, China, 1994.

See also

• Chinese ghosts
• Oni (folklore)

External links

• Unihan Database - U+9B3C