牙

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tusk

On-Yomi: ガ、ゲ — Kun-Yomi: きば、は、きばへん

Elements:

tusk

Heisig story:

If you play with this primitive's form with pencil and paper, you will see that it begins with a box-like shape, and ends with the final two strokes of the halberd, a convenient combination for the tusk protruding from the mouth of an animal.

Heisig comment:

* Since this kanji has 4 strokes, you would expect that as a primitive it would also have 4 - but in fact it has 5 in the following two frames (the second stroke between divided into 2 strokes) and reverts to 4 again in frame 2056.

Koohii stories:

1) [chamcham] 20-12-2008(142): The kanji looks like an elephant with tusks. the box is the elephant's eye. The final stroke is the tusk.

2) [Copycatken] 2-7-2006(87): He stored the tusks into a box, along with the broken halberds.

3) [stupiddog] 28-12-2009(26): You can save yourself a lot of trouble because Heisig is correct on tusk (#1904 牙) (4), bud (#1905 芽) (8), wicked (#1906 邪) (8) but not gracious (#1907 雅) (5th edition says 12, but WWWJDIC says 13). So: In it's Kanji form, it has four (4) strokes, in it's primitive form (I suggest: ivory because that's what elephant tusks are made of) it has always five (5) strokes for all Kanji in RTK1.

4) [rtkrtk] 3-3-2008(21): The waitress was charged by the elephant who skewered her legs with its tusks. As a result her right leg had to be amputated (missing right leg), her left leg is crippled, stiff, and limp (straight left leg), and the tusk is still embedded in her left leg (final stroke attached to waitress's crippled left leg).

5) [Megaqwerty] 10-6-2007(13): This actually reminds me of waitress more than anything, but that doesn't help much.

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