When appearing at the right side of a Chinese character, it usually transforms into 刂.

In the Kangxi Dictionary, there are 377 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical.

刀 is also the 22nd indexing component in the Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in mainland China.

Two associated indexing components, 刂 and ⺈, are affiliated to the principal indexing component 刀.

As an isolated character it is one of the kyōiku kanji or a kanji taught in second grade.