This radical character has different forms in different languages when used as an individual character and as a component.
Traditionally, when used as an individual character, its third stroke is printed as either a horizontal line (食) or a vertical line (食), but more often written as a slanted dot (食); when used as a left component, it is usually printed as 𩙿 and written as 飠 in regular script.
In China, xin zixing adopted the handwritten form 食 and 飠 and applies it also to printing typefaces. This change is applied chiefly to Traditional Chinese publications in mainland China; the left component form 飠 was already replaced by the simplified form 饣 prior to the printing typeface reform. Taiwan's Standard Form of National Characters and Hong Kong's List of Graphemes of Commonly-Used Chinese Characters use 食 and 飠 (the third stroke is horizontal) as the standard forms, while other alternative forms (e.g. 食/𩙿, 食/飠) are still rather prevalent in publishing.
In modern Japanese, 食 (third stroke is horizontal) and 𩙿 are seen as the traditional/orthodox forms. The shinjitai reform changed the third stroke in 食 as an individual character or as a non-left component to a short horizontal line (食); changed the left component form 𩙿 to 飠. In principle, these changes apply only to jōyō kanji (more specifically, jōyō kanji before 2010 revision; some characters added in 2010 were not simplified); the traditional form is used for hyōgai kanji.
Kangxi Dict. Korean
Japanese
Trad. Chinese (TW, HK, MO)
Trad. Chinese (Mainland China)
Simp. Chinese
食
食
食
食
食
飼
飼
飼
飼
饲
饉
饉
饉
饉
馑
饕
饕
饕
饕
饕
Literature
Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987). Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN0-89659-774-1.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Radical 184.
GF 0011-2009 Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components prescribes 201 principle indexing components and 100 associated indexing components (in brackets) used in Simplified Chinese. Not all associated indexing components are listed above.