What ⺸ means
It marks the sheep component used in character lookup.
A radical is a written part dictionaries use to sort or find characters. ⺸ labels the sheep element.
Early oracle-bone inscriptions—divination questions carved on bones or shells—along with bronze inscriptions and small-seal script (an old formal Chinese writing style) depict 羊 as a sheep’s head with curved horns.
Dictionary-facing and technical; it signals character lookup.
For the animal, use 羊; ⺸ is a radical component.
Don't confuse it with
2羊羋
CJK Unified Ideograph-7F8A
The full Chinese character for sheep or goat; ⺸ is a dictionary component.
CJK Unified Ideograph-7F8B
Shuowen Jiezi, an ancient Chinese character dictionary from the Han dynasty, glosses 羋 as “a sheep’s cry”; similar old sheep forms were confused with it. Unicode’s 2026 chart also cross-references 羋.
Questions people ask
1Why does ⺸ 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 ⺸
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2EB8, then Alt+X to get ⺸.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk radical ewe”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2eb8, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⺸CSS
\2EB8Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⺸
HTML hex
⺸
CSS content
content: "\2EB8";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%BA%B8
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.