What ⺝ means
It groups characters for lookup by a shared component.
A radical is the part under which a character is filed in a dictionary. You can find that part in a radical index, then narrow the search by counting the remaining strokes. The moon radical is number 74 in the traditional Kangxi system. ⺝ is a symbol for representing this component separately; it is not a replacement for 月 in ordinary writing. Substituting it can prevent an exact-text search from matching.
The underlying character 月 began as a drawing of the moon and appears in Shang-period inscriptions on animal bones and turtle shells used for divination. That history belongs to 月: ⺝ is a separately encoded way to display its radical form.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ⺝ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the CJK Radicals 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.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⺝
- Search it as
- ⺝ · radical 74 · CJK radical moon · U+2E9D
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⺝\2E9DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.