32. The "Earth" Radical: 土
With the "earth" radical, we have an ultra-simple shape, 土. But the more you investigate this radical, the more surprises you find—buried treasures, one might say.
Here's one surprise right off the bat: Nelson lumps radicals 32 (土: earth) and 33 (士: samurai) into the same category. That makes little sense to me. After all, the length of each top horizontal stroke greatly affects the meaning. Consider, for instance, the difference between these words:
土人 (どじん: native, aborigine) earth + person
士人 (しじん: samurai; person of extensive learning; person of great culture)
samurai + person
The first term here sounds quite derogatory, as the breakdown ("person of the dirt") suggests!
Anyway, I've chosen to treat the two radicals as separate entities.
Yomi, Position, and Shape
The yomi of the "earth" radical is fairly straightforward. In any position, you can call it つち, using the kun-yomi of the kanji 土 (60: soil, earth, ground; land; Saturday; Saturn; Turkey). When this radical slides to the left of a character, it can also go by つちへん or どへん. The latter reflects the on-yomi of 土, as in 土曜日 (どようび: Saturday).
On the left, this radical becomes skinnier, and its bottom stroke angles up slightly:
城 (903: castle)
塊 (1065: lump, mass, clod)
塚 (1607: mound, hillock)
If this compressed shape appears on the left side of a kanji, you can safely assume that it's the on-duty radical.
For the most part, the shape of this radical changes only on the left. When it appears on the right, 土 maintains its orthogonality:
吐 (1634: to spew; exhale)
Here, 土 is merely a component.
Similarly, 土 tends to hold its form at the base of a character:
堂 (557: public building; religious building; dignified)
堅 (1217: firm; steady; stilted)
墨 (1821: black inkstick; black ink; Mexico)
When 土 is on the bottom, it tends to be the radical, as is true in this list. Noting how many other radicals are present in each kanji here, I repeatedly feel surprised that 土 prevails.
That's not the case in the next character:
掛 (1083: to hang; depend on; in the process of)
Here we find two, stacked 土 components. The lower 土 angles upward, breaking ranks with the flatliners in the list we just saw. Despite the duplication in 掛, neither 土 is the on-duty radical. In fact, we can't even really consider them as autonomous components; this 圭 centerpiece is a solitary unit that pops up in several kanji.
Double the Dirt
According to Henshall in his newer edition, the non-Joyo 圭 (corner) originally represented "piled up earth that formed boundaries between fields." But that's never the sense of this extra-dirty component in the following characters:
街 (819: town; street)
Historically, this 圭 phonetically expressed the associated sense "to diverge" but now conveys "to join."
佳 (1044: excellent; good; beautiful)
The 圭 originally meant "ceremonial jade" and now means "angle, jewel." This component acts phonetically to convey the associated sense "smart, beautiful, good."
涯 (1069: outer limits; horizon)
This 圭 is part of 厓, which means "cliff, precipice."
封 (1762: seal; to enclose; make someone landlord of a territory)
This 圭 may represent "earth piled up to a cone-shaped top" or could stand for "sapling." Intriguingly, Henshall notes that in ancient China, planted trees "often indicated a boundary," so here we might have a border consisting of trees, not mounded earth.
崖 (1977: cliff, precipice)
Once again, the 厓 means "cliff, precipice." The 圭 inside it represents "ceremonial jade" and phonetically conveys "sloping" in 崖.
Disguised as Dirt
Just as the left side of 封 misleads us into identifying it as 圭, it's easy to think that a kanji contains 土 when the radical is actually a larger shape:
産 The radical is 生 (radical 100: birth).
致 The radical is 至 (radical 133: arriving).
赦 The radical is 赤 (radical 155: red).
越 The radical is 走 (radical 156: running).
野 The radical is 里 (radical 166: village).
青 The radical is 青 (radical 174: blue).
Here are the meanings of those kanji:
産 (491: to give birth; production; abbrev. of "industry"; assets)
致 (1573: to do; cause; invitation)
赦 (1336: to pardon, forgive)
越 (1021: to cross over; exceed, surpass; move; Vietnam)
野 (213: field)
青 (43: blue)
Simplification and miscopying can also make us treat a shape like dirt when etymologically it isn't dirty at all. The "earth" radical does not appear in the following characters:
先 (49: ahead; before; last (week, etc.), recently; tip; destination)
寺 (133: Buddhist temple)
去 (258: to leave; past; completely)
周 (504: lap, circuit; surroundings; circumference; circle)
素 (737: element, component; primary; simple; bare; emphatic prefix)
The component search display in Denshi Jisho can reinforce the incorrect idea that such characters contain 土. For example, Denshi Jisho says that 寺 includes 土 and 寸. However, this list of shapes is only a tool to help people locate characters; it's not a reflection of etymology.
You may be starting to distrust your impulse to see "earth" in complex characters. If so, you could easily overlook the dirt that actually exists in the following kanji:
報 (789: information; news; to pay back)
Would you think the on-duty radical is 辛 (radical 160), 卩 (radical 26), or maybe 又 (radical 29)? Nope! It's 土!
Surprise!