is this symbol 㒸 a kanji?

Question

I was seeing the kanji for the word group, 隊 and for remembering it, I was trying to discomponse it. This part 㒸 looks like a kanji but I can't find anywhere its meaning if it's really a kanji. I know this kanji 豕 means pig, but this other one 㒸 which looks like "pig" but with "horns" above, is it really a kanji? If so, what does it mean?

Answer 1

Yes, it's something a Japanese person would call 漢字{かんじ} (I think). In English, a closer term would probably be Chinese character or Han character because:

• In Chinese, it's an archaic variant of 遂, a character common in Japanese and Chinese
• It consists of ⿱丷豕 like you said
• It's not used much in Japanese (close to none looking at Google results; the results are mostly dictionary entries)
• It's read suì in Mandarin (the [音読み]{おんよみ} of 遂 is [スイ]{sui} for comparison)
• It's used as a part of several kanji that are actually used in Japanese:
  • Kyōiku kanji: 隊 (in your question)
  • Jōyō kanji: 遂 (mentioned earlier), 墜 (has 隊)
  • Hyōgai kanji (not very common): 燧, 隧, 邃 (note how they all have some variant of 遂)

Answer 2

Etymologically, 㒸 surely represented some meaning at the times of Oracle Script, so we willingly call it a Chinese character (= kanji). However, since kanji had already undergone a millennium of development with full of rebuses and patch-ups by the time the first known dictionary Shuowen Jiezi was compiled, some of original meanings were lost or not correctly passed down.

(source)

㒸 apparently consists of "eight" and "swine" since the oldest attestation, but its original meaning is obscure. Ancient documents tends to use this character for the word written as 遂 today. It is possible that the character referred to some proper name or domain-specific term, like most of still undecoded Oracle characters, or like 好, 商, 青 etc. that were taken over by a more common phonetically similar word.

A similar example is 釆, the shape alone survives the meaning, as parts of 番, 悉 and 釈.

Answer 3

JFYI, a pig is written as 豚 in Japanese. I don't think the asking letter is a Japanese kanji.

With or without the horns, they are only a part of a kanji, not a complete kanji.

For example, 河、海、涼 have the same left side part. The left part means something related to water, but the left side itself cannot be a complete kanji.

For example, in case of "airport" "transport", the "port" can be a word itself. However, "emphasize" "visualize", the "ize" cannot be a word itself. It is only a part of English words, a suffix. It's the same thing.

If you have an advanced knowledge about the etiology of English words, you may know the meaning of each part of an English letter. But I don't think many native English speakers haven't thought of it much. Likewise, your asking part of kanji would probably have a special meaning. But most native Japanese speakers including myself do not know of it. We don't care because it is unnecessary in our actual daily life, except for Japanese exams at school. lol