Chinese character 叜

叜 is a variant form of 叟, meaning “old man” or “elder.”

An oracle-bone form is dated c. 1250–1000 BCE; one inscription uses it as a place name. Qin-era slips and later classics use the related 叟 form for an older man. In Han sources, 叟 could respectfully address an older man and could also name Shu, an ancient region. Those readings belong to historical texts; the variant spelling alone does not tell you which one is meant.

One paleographic reading of the ancient form sees a hand carrying fire beneath a roof: a search scene. On that account, a search sense came to be written 搜, while 叜/叟 carried the elder meaning. The early Chinese character dictionary 《说文》 glosses 叜 as “old” but leaves its structure unexplained, so the proposed picture is not settled.

Someone sent me 叜—what does it mean?

A lone 叜 gives you a character, not the sender’s intent.

Use the surrounding sentence to tell whether it is part of a quotation, a character note, or a deliberate old spelling. The choice of 叜 rather than 叟 preserves a variant form in the text; it does not, by itself, explain why the writer chose it.