Chinese character 廯

It means a building where grain is stored. That is its stable dictionary sense; old commentary also describes it as a granary.

An early written witness is 《爾雅》, a classical Chinese wordbook compiled between the Warring States period and early Western Han. This establishes lexical use by that period, not the date of any surviving handwritten copy.

Is 廯 the same as 廩?

Old dictionaries link them, but they are not safe modern substitutes. 《爾雅》 glosses 廯 with 廩; later dictionaries, including 《廣雅》 and 《廣韻》, also place it among granary terms.

The philologist Wang Yinzhi (王引之) argued that the old gloss might have been attached to a different character. He noted that 《說文解字》, an early character dictionary, omits 廯 in its surviving text.

Mandarin dictionaries record the pinyin readings xiān and xiǎn; the accent marks distinguish tones. Cantonese references give sin2, where 2 marks a tone, and Japanese dictionaries list komegura (“rice storehouse”). These are readings from different traditions, not extra modern meanings.

How do I type 廯?

Use Mandarin input or search by written shape. A pinyin keyboard can try xiān; a lookup that indexes historical readings may also accept xiǎn. Cangjie, a Chinese input method that selects characters by shape, records INFQ for this form. If your tool has component search, try 广 + 鮮.

A box means the current font has no drawing for 廯; it does not change the underlying character. A font with coverage for the character can display it.