What 吞 means
吞 means “swallow,” and can also mean engulf, absorb, or annex.
Within 吞, 口 is the mouth-related component and 天 supplies the sound. As of 2026, no secure oracle-bone or bronze inscription for 吞 is established; its clearest early evidence is textual.
Its clearest early textual trail is in Warring States and Han-era literature: 《戰國策》, a Warring States political-history text, uses 吞 for annexation; Sima Xiangru’s Han-era descriptive poem 《子虛賦》 uses it for containment. In Japanese, 吞 and its variant 呑 share the “swallow/take in” sense. In Chinese, the object sets the reading: food is literal, territory points to annexation, 吞吞吐吐 describes evasive speech, and 吞吐 pairs 吞 with 吐 (“spit out”).
Literal with food, figurative with ideas, and politically forceful with territory.
With territory as its object, 吞 means annex or absorb, not simply eat.
Who writes 吞
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsLiteral swallowing; the object is food, medicine, or another physical thing.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 吞 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
Collections with 吞
2
How to type or find 吞
- Also called
- 呑 · tūn · tun
- Search it as
- swallow · devour · engulf · annex · 吞吞吐吐 · 併吞 · 吞吐
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
吞\541ECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.