About the kanji 鱈 where 魚's bottom is written as 大


I was looking at the picture of a newspaper during the times of the Hibiya
riot (1905) and it took me a while to find the headline word 出鱈目{でたらめ}. In
fact, in every dictionary I have checked so far the kanji 鱈 is written as I am
typing it, with the left part being simply 魚. However, as you can see in the
picture the bottom part of 魚 seems to be 大 instead of 灬.

I could not find any dictionary where the kanji is written as in the picture
below. Is it just a typographical difference? Are 大 and 灬 somehow related and
I just don't know about it?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9iFHe.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9iFHe.png)




It's an older but common variant of the fish radical.

(The entries below are for the character「蘇」which is much more common
than「鱈」but illustrates the same development)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngmrC.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngmrC.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3y1S.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3y1S.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6rNaR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6rNaR.png)

Looks like it is related this way:

> a. 火 ⇒ 大  
>  b. 火 ⇒ 灬

  * a. was used commonly in the past, but now b. is more popular.
  * One possible reason for this is that changing to 大 reduces the total strokes of the character by one, and many people are very concered about the "auspiciousness" of the total stroke count number.
  * @naruto makes a very good point that the「火」shape that appears in the older variants of the fish radical is not related to fire because the fish radical is a complete pictograph in it's own right. In other words, it's not made up of smaller parts, so any change to the _shape_ of the fish radical wouldn't really alter the meaning. 

<http://www.cidianwang.com/shufa/su7387.htm>  
<http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/8607.html>  
<http://www.shufazidian.com/>




It's an older but common variant of the fish radical.

(The entries below are for the character「蘇」which is much more common
than「鱈」but illustrates the same development)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngmrC.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngmrC.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3y1S.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3y1S.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6rNaR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6rNaR.png)

Looks like it is related this way:

> a. 火 ⇒ 大  
>  b. 火 ⇒ 灬

  * a. was used commonly in the past, but now b. is more popular.
  * One possible reason for this is that changing to 大 reduces the total strokes of the character by one, and many people are very concered about the "auspiciousness" of the total stroke count number.
  * @naruto makes a very good point that the「火」shape that appears in the older variants of the fish radical is not related to fire because the fish radical is a complete pictograph in it's own right. In other words, it's not made up of smaller parts, so any change to the _shape_ of the fish radical wouldn't really alter the meaning. 

<http://www.cidianwang.com/shufa/su7387.htm>  
<http://www.guoxuedashi.com/zidian/8607.html>  
<http://www.shufazidian.com/>

