Zihui

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The Zihui (Chinese: 字彙/字汇; pinyin: Zìhuì; Wade-Giles: Tzu Hui; literally "character collection/categorization") was a 1615 Chinese dictionary, edited by Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚) during the late Ming Dynasty. It was the first dictionary to introduce the modern radical-stroke system. The Zihui has 14 fascicles (juan 巻 "scrolls") with 33,179 character entries. While the ancillary first and last fascicles explain topics like stroke order and radicals, the main ones are named after the twelve Earthly Branches. The Qing Dynasty scholar Wu Renchen (吳任臣, 1628-1689) published the 1666 Zihui bu (字彙補 "Zihui supplement").

The Zihui is renowned for establishing the system of 214 radicals, which dictionaries today still use as the basis for the collation of Chinese characters. It also introduced the "radical-and-stroke sorting" principle of arranging characters under a radical according to the number of residual strokes. Since the famous 1716 Kangxi dictionary adopted these 214 graphic elements, they are commonly called the List of Kangxi radicals rather than "List of Zihui radicals".

In order to make this lexicographical advance into the logically arranged 214 radicals, Mei Yingzuo simplified and rationalized the original system of 540 radicals (bushou 部首 "section headers") in the Shuowen Jiezi. Some Shuowen Jiezi radicals contain few characters, which is an inefficient arrangement. For instance, its "man radical" 男, which compounds the "field radical" 田 and the "power radical" 力, only lists three: nan 男 ("man; male"), sheng 甥 ("nephew; niece"), and jiu 舅 ("uncle; brother in law"). The Zihui more efficiently lists nan 男 under the "power radical", sheng 甥 under the "life radical" 生, and jiu 舅 under the "mortar radical" 臼.

In modern Chinese usage, zihui (字匯/字汇) means "glossary, wordbook, lexicon; vocabulary".