Radical 139
Chinese character radical
Radical 139 or radical colour (色部) meaning "colour" or "form" is one of the 29 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 6 strokes.
In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 21 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.
色 is also the 140th indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.
Evolution
Ideogrammic compound 爪 (“claw; hand”) + 卩 (“kneeling person”), originally meant "to press down", later borrowed phonetically to mean "color".
Derived characters
Sinogram
The radical is also used as an independent Chinese character. It is one of the kyōiku kanji or kanji taught in elementary school in Japan. It is a second grade kanji.
References
Literature
Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko.
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