Chinese Radicals - Posted Meanings

[Hero Doug]

This page and this page list's chinese radicals. However, this (卩) radical specifically (# 26 on Yellow Bridge) is listed as meaning "Seal".

My girlfriend pointed out something interesting. Many of the radicals don't have an apparent meaning. I've tried translating many of them (such as 卩 or 厶) and couldn't get a definition, but the site's list the radicals as having a meaning.

Why are they listing a meaning but none of the translation dictionaries (Like kingsoft 2006, Google, adsotrans), or a Chinese person (Fairly young) have one?

[furrball]

because those are not words nor characters in modern chinese.

but they do often have the said meaning inside the character.

this relates to character etymology (introduced, for example, in http://www.zhongwen.com or http://www.internationalscientific.org/ )

[Megacn]

I guess that seal means 印 which contains 卩, so they used "seal" as the name of 卩 to help people to memorize the 卩.

[Hero Doug]

Good explination, thanks for the links. internationalscientific.org looks like it's dealing with this very specific topic.

[melop]

I remember my teacher told me "卩" represents a knife.