What 叟 means
An old man or respected elder.
An earlier form, 叜, appears in oracle-bone inscriptions—writing carved on animal bones and turtle shells. One interpretation sees a hand carrying fire under a roof to search. Later, 叟 was borrowed for “elder”; adding a hand element formed 搜 for “search.”
Literary and old-fashioned alone; in a modern message it can sound deliberately classical.
Use 老人 for a neutral everyday term for an older person in Mandarin.
Who writes 叟
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Related characters
2
Combination ideas
1Fairness to the young and old alike.
Worth knowing
- The Mandarin sōu reading (“soh,” high and level) appears in Han-era references to Shu, an ancient region in today’s Sichuan. In a classical poem, 叟叟 imitates the sound of rinsing rice.
Questions people ask
1Why does 叟 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
10
How to type or find 叟
- Search it as
- sou · sǒu · sōu · laosou · 叜 · 搜
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
Windows
HTML
叟CSS
\53DFPinyin
A Mandarin Pinyin keyboard uses Latin letters for syllables: enter
sou, then choose 叟 from the third-tone results.Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
叟
HTML hex
叟
CSS content
content: "\53DF";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E5%8F%9F
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.