The Foot Radical 足: Overview, Mnemonics and Vocabulary 

One of the most effective ways to master Chinese is learning and understanding radicals. 

This is common advice that almost all newbie Chinese-language learners hear when they start out on their Mandarin journey. 

Why is that? 

This is because radicals appear in every Chinese character, often giving you a hint of what the character means or how it sounds. We have some useful blog posts to explain the importance of learning Chinese radicals, so check them out if you want to know more about them:

• What Are Chinese Radicals? Why Are They Important?
• 3 Things You Wish You Knew about Hanzi
• Your Complete Chinese Radical Chart

This article will dig deep into the foot radical in Chinese to help you understand what it is, how to remember it quickly, and show you the common words containing it. 

What is the foot radical in Chinese? 

The Chinese radical for the foot is 足 (zú). It can also mean sufficient or enough, but we will only talk about this radical in relation to the feet in this article. 

The foot radical is one of the most commonly used radicals. There are 580 characters to be found under this radical ​​in the Kangxi Dictionary (the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th.)

What is the stroke order of the foot radical? 

The foot radical has seven strokes in total, written in the following order:

You might be also interested in: A General Guide To Chinese Character Stroke Order 

How can you memorize the radical quickly? 

Pandanese can help you. 

Pandanese is a web-based application exclusively designed to help Chinese-language learners memorize Chinese characters quicker and more effectively. We use scientifically proven memory-aid methods like mnemonic and Spaced Repetition System (SRS) to optimize your learning ability. 

With the foot radical, Pandanese uses a mnemonic (as in the image below) to help you remember it quicker, then you can review it in an SRS system until the radical is successfully encoded in your brain. 

Try Pandanese to memorize all Chinese radicals with ease NOW! 

Foot radical vocabulary list for you!

If you see Chinese characters and words with the foot radical, they will likely have foot-related meanings. For example, soccer and football are both called 足球 (zúqiú) in Chinese. To avoid misunderstanding and be clearer in your speech, you can refer to football as 美国足球 (Měiguó zúqiú), meaning American football. 

Find more characters containing this radical in the table below: 

Character	Pinyin	English meaning
跑	pǎo	run
跳	tiào	jump; leap; bounce; spring; skip
跌	diē	fall down
跟	gēn	follow
路	lù	road; path
踢	tī	kick
踏	tà	step on
趴	pā	lie prone
踩	cǎi	step on
跨	kuà	step
趾	zhǐ	toe
踪	zōng	trail, track
脚跟	jiǎogēn	heel
蹩	bié	limp
跳伞	tiàosǎn	parachute jumping