# What do the radicals mean? **URL:** \ **Category:** WaniKani\ **Created:** [January 19, 2020, 2:37am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464 "2020-01-19T02:37:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blobberhead](https://cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wanikanicommunity/original/3X/f/d/fd4c154120954695f788402f3bcf4e616499bc2d.png) [@blobberhead](https://community.wanikani.com/u/blobberhead)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 2:37am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464/1 "2020-01-19T02:37:34Z")
What are the meanings associated with the Radicals? For example, the 大 radical means “big” but the ョ radical means “Wolverine”?? It can’t possibly actually mean that in Japanese does it? Are all of these meanings just arbitrarily assigned to each radical? ---
**Author:** ![staubhold](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/staubhold/32/252349_2.png) [@staubhold](https://community.wanikani.com/u/staubhold)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 2:46am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464/2 "2020-01-19T02:46:23Z")
The term radical in wanikani is actually a bit confusing. [This is a list of the actual “official” radicals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kanji_radicals_by_frequency) and their meanings. Wanikani doesn’t adhere to the official/common meanings and often uses their own ones. In addition, there are many more radical cards in wanikani. They are just used as a vehicle to break down the meanings of complex kanji and to guide progression You can of course add your own synonyms if that works better for you, but that also means you will have to come up with your own mnemonic for every kanji that uses these. Keep also in mind that even for the red (kanji cards) there can be some debate over the meaning that wanikani assigns/uses for them, but it’s also not that important in the long run, even Japanese people sometimes don’t know the meaning of some common individual kanjis themselves, because they are only ever used in conjunction with other Kanji. The vocab cards (purple) are the ones that always have definite defined meanings and that you will encounter when reading japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Leebo](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/leebo/32/439476_2.png) [@Leebo](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Leebo)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 3:12am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464/3 "2020-01-19T03:12:31Z")
Radicals don’t have meanings here on WaniKani. They have “names.” They’re not so much arbitrarily chosen, as they are chosen for being memorable to use in mnemonics. They don’t always have meanings in Japanese either. Sometimes they are just shapes. They might have originally had some meaning in the original pictographic version thousands of years ago, but over time kanji often get simplified into similar looking shapes and those modern shapes don’t necessarily mean anything in that case. ---
**Author:** ![Saimin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/user_avatar/community.wanikani.com/saimin/32/268794_2.png) [@Saimin](https://community.wanikani.com/u/Saimin)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 11:03am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464/4 "2020-01-19T11:03:47Z")
Leebo already said all you need to know, but there are quite a few similar threads about radicals already, maybe you’ll find more info there: > [@Can I remove Radicals?](https://community.wanikani.com/t/can-i-remove-radicals/40736/21): > > I just wrote this in another thread, there are no “official” japanese radical names, only nicknames. while for @FrostWarlock learning many of the first radicals will do almost nothing, i’m not so sure that knowing 1000 simplified chinese Hanzi will mean that you know all or even most of WK’s radicals for the later levels. And even early radicals like [ｲ leader](https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/leader) will turn up in complex kanji and their mnemonics. There are very few radicals per level, so i’d still recommend to learn the “stupid f… ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/wanikanicommunity/original/4X/6/2/a/62a8b0f4c59ff2c5b6651ffcf43531480b3e5297.png) [@system](https://community.wanikani.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2021, 11:04am UTC](https://community.wanikani.com/t/what-do-the-radicals-mean/41464/5 "2021-01-18T11:04:00Z")
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