Radical 212

{{Short description|Chinese character radical}}

{{Kangxi Radical Infobox|212|uni=9F8D

|meaning=dragon

|pny= lóng

|bopo= ㄌㄨㄥˊ

|wade= lung2

|jyutping= lung4

|yale= lung4

|hi= リョー ・リュー ryō, ryū
たつ tatsu

|kanji= 竜 ryū

|hang= 용 yong

|hanja= 룡 ryong

}}

File:龍-seal.svg]]

Radical 212, 龍, 龙, or 竜 meaning "dragon", is one of the two of the 214 Kangxi radicals that are composed of 16 strokes. The character arose as a stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon,{{efn|龍: bottom left: jaws (open downwards); top left: back of head; right side: body and legs; right bottommost stroke: tail}} and refers to a version of the dragon in each East Asian culture:

• Chinese dragon, Lóng in Chinese
• Japanese dragon, Ryū or Tatsu in Japanese
• Korean dragon, Ryong or Yong in Korean
• Vietnamese dragon, Rồng in Vietnamese or Long in Sino-Vietnamese

It may also refer to the Dragon as it appears in the Chinese zodiac. It is also a common surname.

In the Kangxi Dictionary 14 characters (out of 40,000) are under this radical.

It occurs as a phonetic complement in some fairly common Chinese characters, for example 聾 = "deaf", which is composed of 龍 "dragon" and the "ear" 耳 radical, "a word with meaning related to ears and pronounced similarly to 龍: "dragon gives sound, ear gives meaning".