CJK Unified Ideograph-5Aaa

媪 means an older woman or mother, in a respectful, old-book way. You meet it in classical Chinese, not in chat, often where a woman is named by status instead of her given name. 媼 is the traditional form of the same character.

Text symbol

What 媪 means

Read it as old mother, said with respect. In sources checked for this page, the earliest direct dictionary evidence is the Shuowen gloss; those sources do not establish an oracle-bone or bronze form. In Warring States prose it addresses Zhao's queen mother, and in records from the Han period labels such as 刘媪 and 卫媪 mark a mother or older woman by status rather than by personal name.

People asking about 媪 and 媼 are seeing one character in two wardrobes: 媪 is simplified, 媼 is traditional. 嫗/妪 is a separate parallel word, and compounds like 老媪, 媼神 and 富媪 keep the old literary flavor. If you hit a 媪 Windows font gap, copy it from the palette above; As of 2024, Taiwan's CNS registry lists it in Windows 10 default fonts, but other fonts still show tofu.

Who writes 媪

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Questions people ask

Why does 媪 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.