小 — the “small” radical

Radical #42 3 strokes

The small radical. 3 of the JLPT kanji on this site are built with it — recognizing the piece makes them far easier to remember.

Kanji using the 小 radical (3)

小little, small 少few, little 尚esteem, furthermore

← 寸 inch 尢 lame →

Radicals (部首, bushu) are the shared building blocks of kanji, used to sort them in every dictionary. Learn the common ones and new kanji stop looking random.