Incorrect Radicals?

[Spencer5cent]

I’ll just give you an example. For the character 垂， the radical is 土 and that’s what pleco says. But it also says that 士 is a component which I didn’t think is true. They are two different radicals (that look very similar) and 垂 only has one of them so why does it say it contains both. This is not the only character I’ve noticed this on. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

The component listing in the CHARS tab is meant to be a visual rather than a semantic breakdown, so while the official radical is indeed 土, the appearance of the actual character is a 千 plus a 艹 plus a 士 and so that's what we report there.

It's a more important distinction in cases like 肉; in a great many characters 肉 as a component is rendered as 月, 育 e.g., but then in other characters it appears as itself, 腐 e.g. For radical purposes we'd report both of those as having the radical 肉 but for our component breakdowns we report the 月 characters as 月.

For a semantic / etymological character component breakdown you'd probably be better off with the Outlier dictionary, which decomposes characters based on that rather than their current appearance. (though they don't appear to have an entry for 垂 yet)