What 叟 means
No; read it as 叟, meaning an elder or old man.
The variant is first recorded in the 997 Longkan Shoujing, an early Chinese character dictionary. It arose when a scribe misread the top of the older form of 叟 as 申, and later dictionaries preserved it. The base character 叟 appears as a place name in Shang oracle-bone inscriptions (divination writing carved on bone or shell), then as “old person” on Qin-era bamboo slips and in later classical texts.
Unicode retains 叟 for round-trip conversion with Taiwan’s CNS 11643-1992 character set. In Word 365, type 2F837 and press AltX. On its own, 叟 normalizes to 叟; the standardized sequence 叟 followed by UFE00 preserves the variant request through normalization, but a font must support that glyph distinction.
A recorded historical spelling variant, not a distinct modern word.
Ordinary prose uses 叟; 叟 preserves a specific historical form.
Who writes 叟
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Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Will text normalization keep 叟 separate from 叟?
No. Unicode normalization maps the standalone character to 叟. The standardized sequence 叟 followed by UFE00 preserves the variant distinction through normalization, if the font supports it.
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How to type or find 叟
- Search it as
- 叟 · 2f837 · 叟 variant · 叟 unicode · old man character · elder character · rare chinese character · chinese character variant
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
叟\2F837Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.