CJK Unified Ideograph-27607

It depends on which writing tradition you are looking at. In Chinese character references, 𧘇 is a structural component — the four-stroke lower form inside 表, the everyday character for “surface” or “to express” — not a standalone word.

In historical Vietnamese Chữ Nôm — a script that adapted Han characters to write Vietnamese — it writes ấy, a demonstrative meaning “that,” “that one,” or a person or thing already mentioned. The Nôm Foundation dictionary traces the form through 依 → 衣 → 𧘇 and quotes it in Buddhist prose and literary works such as the classic poem Truyện Kiều and Cung oán.

Why does the same glyph have two readings?

Because two different writing traditions claimed it. The Chinese entry gives it a structural job: a lower form preserved inside larger characters. The Nôm entry gives it a language job: writing ấy in phrases like “ngày hôm ấy” (“that day”) and “ông ấy” (“that person,” or simply “he”). It also records a connective use — ấy carrying a thought forward like “then.”

The Nôm dictionary presents the form as a reduction chain, 依 → 衣 → 𧘇 — successively simpler shapes for the same written word. Its quoted examples include texts dated 1917, 1925, and 1940, which show early-twentieth-century literary use rather than the character’s first appearance.