What 灰 means
Its meaning comes from 灰: ash, gray, or lime by context.
The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary compiled around 100 CE, defines 灰 as fire residue. Later Chinese texts use it for dust, burning, fragments, despair, gray, and lime.
Why does 灰 have its own code point?
It preserves source entries through round-trip conversion.
Unicode records this form in T3-2429 of Taiwan’s CNS 11643-1992 and KP1-54B7 of North Korea’s KPS 10721-2000. The block preserves CNS entries when text moves to Unicode and back.
Text normalization, which standardizes equivalent text, can turn 灰 into 灰 and erase the distinction. Unicode registers 灰︀ (灰 followed by the invisible variation selector VS1) for the variant glyph.
Who writes 灰
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Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does 灰 show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find 灰
- Search it as
- 2f835 · 灰 · ash · gray · lime
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
灰\2F835Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.