What 嘆 means
It means a sigh or lament, and it can also express admiration.
The Han-era Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary, explains 嘆 through a mouth part and a sound-giving part, linking it to an audible human response. Japanese words show the range: 嘆息 is a sigh, 悲嘆 expresses grief, and 感嘆 can express admiration or wonder.
Why does it look different from 嘆?
It keeps an older glyph form, not a separate meaning.
Japanese reference works use 嘆 as the standard form and describe 嘆 as its old-style form. 歎 is an older or alternate character, while simplified Chinese normally writes 叹. The compatibility entry preserves a distinction from JIS X 0213, a Japanese character-encoding standard; that computer-era mapping does not date the much older character.
Han characters can have different outlines in fonts set for Japanese, Chinese, or Korean text, so a screen shape alone may not identify the encoded character. Unicode normalization may map 嘆 to 嘆, leaving the meaning while changing the exact glyph.
In Japanese, it marks an old-style or source-preserving form; by itself, it does not identify a particular emotion.
A lone 嘆 does not reliably mean “I’m sad.”
Who writes 嘆
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What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsStandard 嘆 is expected; 嘆 marks an old-style or source-preserving form.
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 嘆 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.
More like this
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How to type or find 嘆
- Also called
- old-style 嘆 · kyūjitai 嘆 · 旧字体の嘆
- Search it as
- 嘆 · 歎 · 叹 · kyūjitai · sigh · lament · admiration · old-style kanji
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
嘆\FA37Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.