䨮 (historical form of snow)

It means snow and is a fuller historical form of 雪. This rare Chinese snow variant is not a separate weather word. If someone sends 䨮 alone, read it as snow; its unusual form points to the old spelling or its visual style. In compounds, the word written with it can also carry senses of whiteness, purity, or wiping away a grievance; context selects those meanings.

Where did 䨮 come from?

It developed through several old Chinese writing styles. The graph for snow appears in oracle-bone inscriptions—questions carved on animal bones or turtle shells for divination—and in a bronze form from the late Western Zhou. In small-seal script, an early standardized style, 䨮 writes 雨 above 彗. Later clerical script, a more squared writing style, straightened and simplified the lower part, giving the common form 雪. The link is historical: 䨮 preserves a fuller shape, while 雪 is its reduced form.

Those oracle-bone questions asked whether snow or rain would fall and whether it would continue. One specific oracle-bone ritual passage has a disputed reading as a reference to a snow deity. Outside that passage, the safe reading is snow. The word's later senses include whiteness, purity, and clearing shame or grievance; these are extensions of the word written with the character, not a separate meaning unique to 䨮.