The roof radical 宀

Read mián, 3 strokes. It indexes 43 distinct HSK characters.

43HSK characters

3Strokes

#40Radical number

宀Glyph

Quick answer

What does the roof radical (宀) mean, and which characters use it?

Roof (宀, mián) is Kangxi radical 40, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to roof. 43 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 定, 实, 家. When you meet a new character carrying 宀, expect its sense to touch roof and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 宀 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 宀 sits on one side to signal the roof sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing roof plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the roof-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 43 roof characters 43 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	定	dìng	8	2	3
2	实	shí	8	2	3
3	家	jiā	10	1	1
4	安	ān	6	2	3
5	容	róng	10	3	3
6	害	hài	10	3	3
7	客	kè	9	1	1
8	密	mì	11	4	4
9	室	shì	9	2	2
10	富	fù	12	3	4
11	官	guān	8	4	5
12	完	wán	7	2	2
13	宽	kuān	10	4	4
14	宝	bǎo	8	4	5
15	审	shěn	8	6	6
16	宣	xuān	9	3	5
17	察	chá	14	3	4
18	守	shǒu	6	4	5
19	宗	zōng	8	6	5
20	宁	níng	5	4	5
21	宿	sù	11	5	5
22	宜	yí	8	2	2
23	寒	hán	12	4	4
24	宾	bīn	10	5	3
25	宫	gōng	9	6	6
26	宏	hóng	7	6	6
27	宠	chǒng	8	6	5
28	宰	zǎi	10	7-9	6
29	寓	yù	12	7-9	5
30	它	tā	5	2	2
31	寄	jì	11	4	4
32	宇	yǔ	6	6	5
33	宵	xiāo	10	7-9	6
34	寂	jì	11	7-9	5
35	寝	qǐn	13	7-9	·
36	寡	guǎ	14	7-9	·
37	宅	zhái	6	6	6
38	宴	yàn	10	6	5
39	宙	zhòu	8	7-9	5
40	宪	xiàn	9	7-9	6
41	寞	mò	13	7-9	5
42	寥	liáo	14	7-9	·
43	寨	zhài	14	7-9	·

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

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Drill the roof-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

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