When 虍 hu3 comes up (from Radicals 211-240) in my writing practise, it completes the character squished up, with a space in the bottom half, as if there is room to put another character or radical in there.

Just wondering if this is intentional, as the character looks like it should fill the square when I consulted the dictionary? Also, in the dictionary it is listed as "hu1" meaning "tiger stripe". For the "hu3" character meaning "tiger" they put in another two strokes in the space which is appearing empty.

I can provide a screen-shot if necessary :)

MDBG says that 虍 hu3 is the "tiger" radical, while 虍 hu1 is "stripes of tiger". "Tiger" is 虎 hu3. I'm not sure if 虍 is actually used on its own that much; maybe some people more expert in Chinese can weigh in.

James

I can hazard a guess.
This is the tiger radical, but it isn't used as a word on it's own. As you already noted, the character meaning tiger has legs in the space under it. 虎

There's at least another four characters based on the tiger radical with different components in this space underneath.
nue4, lu3, lu4, xu1

The following http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/yitic/sc/sc12144.htm is a collection of photocopies of the character 虍from some ancient dictionaries. The explanation 虍 。。。虎文也 has appeared in several entries. We can see that both forms of the character (the large 七 and small七) have been used. So, it seems that both forms can be used to mean “tiger stripe”. Similarly, both form of the character have been used in 凡虍之屬皆从虍。So, the radical虍 can also be written in both forms.

As to the current standards, Taiwan has standardized it to 虍 (the small 七). It is the character c12144 in the 《罕用國字標準字體表》. In the mainland, since it is outside the 通用规范汉字，so there is no standard for it.

Since the two forms are just variants of the same character, I doubt that there should be two different readings for them. Here is a page from the MOE of Taiwan about this radical http://www.edu.tw/files/site_content/M0001/bushou/bu141.htm . The reading is ㄏㄨ (hu1). Also, zdic only lists the reading as hu1. So, apart from MDBG, are there other sources that say it should be read as hu3 when used as a radical?

I'll change it to hu1. Should the definition also be changed to "tiger stripe" from "tiger", then? Or should both be in there?

thanks PTS for the info and links.

I guess my previous post is a good example of "a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing" hahaha.

I stand corrected.

@brucejackson when I said "maybe some people more expert in Chinese can weigh in" I was thinking of pts. He's our resident monster of erudition.

Thank you for the compliment. Actually, my Chinese is not that good. I just spend a lot of time looking for answers, and easily turn 10 mins Skritter time into a two hours session.