The Basic and Extended Meanings of a Radical
Originally, each radical was an integral character created to represent only one meaning. We refer to the original meaning of a radical as its “basic meaning.” As Chinese language and writing developed, each radical’s meaning expaned to represent several different concepts. This means that a single radical may have several different meanings, though they are all related to the same basic meaning. We refer to the meanings that the radical accrued over time as “extended meanings.”
The original and extended meanings of the integral character 火 (fire) illustrate this phenomenon. When the integral character 火 is combined with other characters it forms simple words or phrases that represent meanings that are sometimes conceptually distant from fire.
Such as:
火红的太阳The sun with fire color
红火 (flourishing)
火红的青春 (lively youth)
上火 (inflammation)
动火 (get angry)
When combined with other characters 火’s original meaning expands to include the color of fire, success, lieliness, illness, and anger. The same diffusion of meaning occurs with the radical fire, when combined with another component to form a compound character. For example, the compound character 煌, with the radical 火, means glory, while the character 燥 means dry (after being baked in a fire). So 火 takes on the extended meanings of glory and dryness..
To effectively use radicals in the task of memorizing new characters, we need to know both the radical’s basic meaning as well as its extended meanings. To grasp a radical’s extended meanings it is very helpful to consider examples of compound characters that use that radical, or phrases in which the radical is used as integral character, just as we have done above with 火.
