Radical 37

大
Radical 37 (U+2F24)
大 (U+5927) "big, very"
Pronunciations
Pinyin:	dà
Bopomofo:	ㄉㄚˋ
Gwoyeu Romatzyh:	dah
Wade–Giles:	ta4
Cantonese Yale:	daaih
Jyutping:	daai6
Pe̍h-ōe-jī:	tāi
Japanese Kana:	ダイ dai / タイ tai (on'yomi) おお ō / おお-きい ō-kii (kun'yomi)
Sino-Korean:	대 dae
Hán-Việt:	Đại
Names
Chinese name(s):	(Top) 大字頭/大字头 dàzìtóu
Japanese name(s):	大/だい dai (Top) 大頭/だいがしら daigashira (Top) 大冠/だいかんむり daikanmuri
Hangul:	클 keul
Stroke order animation

Radical 37 or radical big (大部) meaning "big", "great", or "very" is one of the 31 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of three strokes.

In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 132 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.

大 is also the 33rd indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.

Evolution

Compare 天; unrelated to 犬.

• 
  Shang dynasty Oracle bone script
• 
  Shang dynasty Bronze script
• 
  Western Zhou Bronze script
• 
  Spring and Autumn period bronze script
• 
  Warring States period bronze script
• 
  Chu slip and silk script
• 
  Qin slip script
• 
  Large seal script character
• 
  Small seal script character
• 
  Qing dynasty Clerical script

Derived characters

Strokes	Characters
+0	大 夨
+1	天 太 夫 夬 夭
+2	央 夯 夰 失 夲 夳 头SC (=頭 -> 頁)
+3	夵 夶 (=比 -> 比) 夷 夸 (also SC form of 誇 -> 言) 夹SC (=夾) 夺SC (=奪) 夻 夼
+4	夽 夾 夿 奀 奁SC (=奩) 奂SC (=奐)
+5	奃 奄 奅 奆 奇 奈 奉 奋SC (=奮) 奌 (=點 -> 黑) 奍 奔
+6	奎 奏 奐 契 奒 奓 奕 奖SC (=獎 -> 犬)
+7	奊 套 奘 奙 奚
+8	奛 奜 奝 奞 奟
+9	奠 奡 奢 奣 奤 奥SC/JP (=奧)
+10	奦 奧 奨JP (=獎 -> 犬)
+11	奩 奪 奫 奬 (=獎 -> 犬)
+12	奭
+13	奮 奯
+15	奰
+19	奱
+21	奲

Sinogram

The radical is also used as an independent Chinese character. It is one of the Kyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school in Japan. It is a first grade kanji.

Further reading

• 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+5927