Chinese character 严

It marks strictness, severity, gravity, or solemnity. Read the Chinese character in its full word: 严格 means strict or rigorous, 严厉 means severe or stern, 严肃 means serious or solemn, and 严重 means serious or grave. It can also be a Chinese surname.

The older form 嚴 is attested on late Western Zhou bronze inscriptions—writing cast onto bronze vessels. The Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary, glosses 嚴 as an urgent command. This attests the older form, not the later simplified outline 严.

Is 严 used in Japanese?

Modern Japanese uses 厳, its standardized simplified form (shinjitai). It appears in 厳しい, meaning strict, and 厳か, meaning solemn. 嚴 is the older Japanese form; it is also used in traditional Chinese and in Korean Hanja, the use of Chinese characters in Korean writing. These are language-specific written forms, not font variants.

Why does 严 look different in fonts?

A font can alter the drawing, not the character in the text. CJK fonts can follow regional stroke conventions, but 严, 嚴, and 厳 are separately encoded characters. Selecting a font cannot turn one of these characters into another.