What ؇ means
It is the digit four, written the Arabic-Indic way: ٤. Arabic-script mathematics writes numbers with Arabic-Indic digits (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩), so the index of a root uses them too. ؇ is the fourth root ( with ٤), and its sibling is the cube root ( with ٣). The fourth root of ١٦ is ٢, because ٢ ٢ ٢ ٢ ١٦.
Because Arabic is written right to left, fonts and textbooks do not all draw these signs the same way: some show a root opening to the left like the Western sign, others a mirrored form. The meaning is the same in every drawing.
Unicode encoded a single character so that Arabic texts can show the whole sign in one piece instead of building it from a and a separately positioned digit. Full math typesetting software usually builds roots from parts, so the single character turns up mainly in plain text.
Neutral technical notation: a math operator, with no social or emotional meaning.
Part of collections
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
3
Worth knowing
- Medieval mathematicians of the Maghreb wrote roots with a sign taken from the letter jīm (ج), the first letter of jidhr, Arabic for “root”.
Questions people ask
1Is ؇ an emoji?
No. It is a plain text math symbol; how it looks depends on your font, and some fonts can't show it at all.
More like this
10
How to type or find ؇
- Also called
- Arabic fourth root sign · Arabic radical with four
- Search it as
- fourth root · 4th root · Arabic fourth root · Arabic root sign · radical sign · Arabic math symbol · ٤ root
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
؇\0607Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.