// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Radical 87 say? "I'm a root of all problems.

爪
Radical 87 (U+2F56)
爪 (U+722A) "claw"
Pronunciations
Pinyin:	zhǎo/zhuǎ
Bopomofo:	ㄓㄠˇ/ㄓㄨㄚˇ
Wade–Giles:	chao3/chua3
Cantonese Yale:	jáau
Jyutping:	zaau2
Pe̍h-ōe-jī:	jiáu
Japanese Kana:	ソウ sō (on'yomi) つめ tsume (kun'yomi)
Sino-Korean:	조 cho
Names
Chinese name(s):	(爫) 爪字頭/爪字头 zhǎozìtóu/zhuǎzìtóu
Japanese name(s):	爪/つめ tsume 爪繞/そうにょう sōnyō (爫) 爪冠/つめかんむり tsumekanmuri (爫) 爪頭/つめがしら tsumegashira (爫) ノツ冠/のつかんむり notsukanmuri
Hangul:	손톱 sontop
Stroke order animation

Radical 87 or radical claw (爪部) meaning "claw", "nail" or "talon" is one of the 34 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of 4 strokes.

In the Kangxi Dictionary there are 36 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.

爪 is also the 86th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China, with 爫 being its associated indexing component.

Evolution

Unrelated to 瓜.

• 
  Oracle bone script character
• 
  Bronze script character
• 
  Large seal script character
• 
  Small seal script character

Derived characters

Strokes	Characters
+0	爪 爫Component only
+4	爬 爭
+5	爮 爯 爰
+6	爱SC (=愛 -> 心)
+8	爲
+10	爳
+11	爴
+14	爵

Variant forms

There is a design nuance between the form of 爪 in different typefaces. In mainland China standard, the starting point of the third and fourth strokes of 爪 are joined with the first stroke, while in Taiwan's Standard Form of National Characters, they are detached. This difference may apply to both printing typefaces and handwriting forms, and usually both are acceptable.

Joined	Detached
爪	爪
爬	爬

The upper component form 爫 also has variant forms in different regions. Traditionally, the second and fourth strokes point outwards in printing typefaces (爫) but point inwards in handwriting (爫). In mainland China's xinzixing (new typeface), some 爫 were replaced by ⺈ (a variant form of the radical 刀), e.g. 爭 -> 争, while the others were altered their form to imitate the handwriting form 爫, e.g. 爵 -> 爵; These changes also apply to traditional Chinese characters, e.g. 諍 -> 諍, 爲 -> 爲. Similar change were also adopted in Japanese jōyō kanji (commonly used Chinese characters), e.g. 爵 -> 爵, while the forms of kyūjitai and hyōgai kanji were left unchanged, e.g. 爲 (=為), 爰. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau where Traditional Chinese is used, 爫 is adopted as the standard form, though both forms are commonly used in publication.

Pointing inwards	Pointing outwards
爫	爫
爰	爰
Traditional handwriting Mainland China new typeface Hong Kong & Taiwan standard Japan jōyō kanji	Traditional typefaces Mainland China old typeface Hong Kong & Taiwan old typeface Japan hyōgai kanji Korea

Literature

• Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
• Lunde, Ken (Jan 5, 2009). "Appendix J: Japanese Character Sets" (PDF). CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing (Second ed.). Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1.

External links

• Unihan Database - U+722A