Etymology Explorer Quick Start Guide

Immediately below the root of the tree (identified by the microscope icon) is the node representing the character itself. Opening this node, by clicking on the plus icon, will do two things:

• First, it will show how the children components are grouped, and
• second, it will show what the children components are, together with their pronunciation and meaning, if appropriate.

The grouping mechanism is shown via one of thirteen icons, which are shown on the left. The children component will follow a sequence that matches the grouping mechanism. For example, in the left-to-right grouping, the first child will be the left component while the second child will be the right component. All groups consist of exactly two children except for:

• the left-to-middle-and-below and above-to-middle-and-below groups, which consist of three children each, and
• the variation icon, which is a unary operator that is used to indicate that a certain component is a variation of another one.

The children components can be:

• a bona fide character which can stand alone with its own meaning and pronunciation;
• a radical, i.e. one of 214 components better known as the Kang Xi radicals;
• or a character fragment.

This last component merits some explanation. Contrary to popular belief, the Kang Xi radicals are not the elementary particles from which all characters are formed. The radicals were selected as possible dictionary search keys and hence it was sufficient that every character have at least one of the 214 radicals. This means that many characters contain parts which are not bona fide characters or radicals themselves but which may (or may not) occur with some regularity. Some fragments originated as bona fide characters in ancient times but now only exist as part of other characters. These fragments, for lack of a better term, are not displayable because they are not included in the standard fonts. In some cases the unnamed component is further decomposable into subcomponents which may include bona fide characters and radicals.

Three different color spheres are used to represent the components:

• the green sphere represents a character,
• the blue sphere represents a radical. Since more than radical may be present in a character but only one can be the radical for the purpose of dictionary searches, the key radical is highlighted with the icon.
• the black sphere is used to represent a character fragment.

Additionally, the component that gives the character its sound is highlighted with the icon.

Icon	Meaning
	Left to right, as in 好
	Above to below, as in 要
	Left to middle and right, as in 摊
	Above to middle and below, as in 总
	Full surround, as in 国
	Surround from above, as in 同
	Surround from below, as in 凶
	Surround from left, as in 区
	Surround from upper left, as in 在
	Surround from upper right, as in 可
	Surround from lower left, as in 这
	Overlaid, as in 坐
	Alteration, variation, or simplification

Note: There is no canonical way for decomposing a Chinese character. Different researchers have certainly come up with different ways to do so. This particular set of grouping rules represented by the first twelve icons is based on the Ideographic Description Characters adopted by the Unicode 4.1 Standard.

See also

• Access the Character Etymology Dictionary
• YellowBridge Chinese English Dictionary