Radical 子

3 strokes

Very occasionally characters have a “neutral” tone, and this is represented by a fifth archetype, a robot. There are only a few robot stories in this book.

The original meaning of this character was “child”, but it is nowadays more often seen as a noun suffix (that is, attached to a noun — and not implying that the noun is small).

/ (This story is set in the future) Imagine a small child playing at home, rolling wheels about on the floor. The robot babysitter emits a “zzz” sound, as though asleep, and then pretends to wake up with a start each time a wheel crashes into him.