What means
It fills positions 4, 5 and 8 in the eight-cell tile. Aligned tiles combine to make a larger picture.
A 1983 guide for the Kaypro 10 computer describes software using each text cell as eight pixels to draw pictures. Unicode’s 2021 proposal called this eight-cell format an “octant,” by analogy with six-cell “sextant” mosaics.
Why does show as a blank box?
Some fonts lack its shape, so it may appear as a box.
In a 2026 terminal-support check, some emulators drew these graphics themselves when fonts lacked them, helping neighboring tiles meet.
Don't confuse it with
4Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type
𜶈\1CD88Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.