What 𡹎 means
No meaning is on record anywhere — only a pronunciation survived.
𡹎 is built from two pieces: 山, 'mountain,' on the left, and 𡇌 on the right — itself an old variant of 回, 'return.' Yet nothing written down explains what they meant together. It is not known from any text outside dictionaries, and the big Chinese dictionaries that list it — such as the Hanyu Da Zidian — give the reading and mark the meaning as unknown.
The one solid record is its sound. The Kangxi Dictionary of 1716, an authoritative character dictionary, records it with a single note — 音回, 'pronounced like 回' — citing the much older Longkan dictionary as its source. A sound, and nothing else: the entry offers no definition.
So if you met 𡹎 in the wild, there was no settled meaning behind it. Someone chose an extremely obscure glyph, or it surfaced from a dictionary, database or old-text archive where such characters are catalogued.
Why does a character with no meaning exist?
It has company — dictionaries passed down many sound-only entries.
The trail behind 𡹎 runs through the Longkan Shoujian, a dictionary compiled around 997 by the Buddhist monk Xingjun to help readers interpret the characters and variant forms in Buddhist manuscripts. It is the source the Kangxi entry cites for the sound.
When the Kangxi Dictionary was compiled in 1716 it re-catalogued entries like this one from older dictionaries — again a sound with no definition. In 2001, Unicode's Extension B — a supplementary block for rare and historic ideographs — took in more than 42,000 characters, many of them known chiefly from old dictionaries, so that digitized texts can reproduce them faithfully.
That is why 𡹎 exists in your character set yet has no meaning on record: it is a museum specimen, preserved so ancient texts stay typeable — not a word in living use.
Who writes 𡹎
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsIts natural habitat — a catalogue entry, not a word in use.
Questions people ask
4Is 𡹎 Chinese, Japanese or Korean?
By record, Chinese — its dictionary trail is Chinese. Unicode's character data also files a Japanese reading (kai), but no living language writes with it.
How is 𡹎 pronounced?
Mandarin huí — the Kangxi note says simply 'pronounced like 回.' Japanese data lists kai. Both are catalogue entries, not a word anyone speaks.
Why does 𡹎 show as an empty box on my device?
Your font or app doesn't cover CJK Extension B, the block where the rarest ideographs live. The character is valid — it copies correctly and displays with a fuller CJK font.
Does 𡹎 mean 'mountain' plus 'return'?
No — that's a guess from its halves. The right half is 𡇌, a variant of 回 'return,' but characters don't sum their parts, and the dictionaries that list 𡹎 record no meaning.
How to type or find 𡹎
- Search it as
- 𡹎 · huí · hui · han character · chinese character · rare chinese character · u+21e4e · 21e4e
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𡹎\21E4ECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.



