Radical (Chinese character)
A more complex is the character 媽 mā meaning “mother” (shown right), in which the left part 女 nǚ meaning "woman" or "female"  happens to be the semantic component, and also the section header under which dictionaries list the graph. However, not all section headers function in a particular character as the semantic component. Some are based on phonetics, or hint as the character's pronunciation, like the right part 馬 mǎ meaning "horse" of the character 媽. Although the meaning of the character 媽 has no clear, obvious connection to a horse, 馬 is included to help the reader remember its pronunciation. Other section headers are merely chosen for convenience of finding the character in a dictionary, and play neither a semantic nor a phonetic role, like 二 èr "two" in 亞 yà "second" or "inferior",亅 jué (no meaning) in 了 liào "past tense marker", and 一 yī "one" in 丁 dīng "fourth". These two meanings of “radical” are not synonymous, though they may coincide in a particular example, causing a lot of confusion. (For clarity, both semantic component and section header terms are used here.)