The fire radical 火

Read huǒ, 4 strokes. It indexes 59 distinct HSK characters.

59HSK characters

4Strokes

#86Radical number

火Glyph

Quick answer

What does the fire radical (火) mean, and which characters use it?

Fire (火, huǒ) is Kangxi radical 86, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to fire. 59 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 点, 然, 火. When you meet a new character carrying 火, expect its sense to touch fire and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 火 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 火 sits on one side to signal the fire sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing fire 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 fire-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 59 fire characters 59 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	点	diǎn	9	1	1
2	然	rán	12	2	3
3	火	huǒ	4	1	1
4	热	rè	10	1	1
5	照	zhào	13	2	3
6	灵	líng	7	6	5
7	灯	dēng	6	2	3
8	烈	liè	10	3	5
9	灾	zāi	7	5	5
10	烟	yān	10	3	4
11	灭	miè	5	6	5
12	烦	fán	10	3	4
13	熟	shú	15	2	4
14	烧	shāo	10	4	3
15	燃	rán	16	4	5
16	炸	zhà	9	6	5
17	焦	jiāo	12	6	6
18	爆	bào	19	6	6
19	灰	huī	6	5	5
20	烤	kǎo	10	5	5
21	煤	méi	13	5	5
22	烘	hōng	10	7-9	6
23	炼	liàn	9	4	3
24	烂	làn	9	5	5
25	熊	xióng	14	5	3
26	炉	lú	8	6	6
27	炎	yán	8	6	6
28	炒	chǎo	8	6	5
29	炮	pào	9	6	5
30	炭	tàn	9	7-9	5
31	烹	pēng	11	7-9	6
32	焕	huàn	11	7-9	·
33	焚	fén	12	7-9	·
34	焰	yàn	12	7-9	6
35	蒸	zhēng	13	7-9	6
36	熄	xī	14	7-9	6
37	熏	xūn	14	7-9	6
38	熬	áo	14	7-9	6
39	燥	zào	17	7-9	4
40	煮	zhǔ	12	6	5
41	灶	zào	7	7-9	6
42	灸	jiǔ	7	7-9	·
43	灼	zhuó	7	7-9	·
44	灿	càn	7	7-9	6
45	炊	chuī	8	7-9	·
46	炖	dùn	8	7-9	·
47	炬	jù	8	7-9	·
48	炫	xuàn	9	7-9	·
49	烁	shuò	9	7-9	6
50	烛	zhú	10	7-9	5
51	烫	tàng	10	7-9	5
52	焊	hàn	11	7-9	·
53	煌	huáng	13	7-9	6
54	煎	jiān	13	7-9	5
55	煲	bāo	13	7-9	·
56	煽	shān	14	7-9	·
57	熙	xī	14	7-9	·
58	燕	yàn	16	7-9	·
59	熨	yùn	15	·	6

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 fire-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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