What 擵 means
擵 belongs to the 摩 family and means rubbing or grinding. Its left part, 扌, is the hand component; 摩 supplies the sound and base meaning. The early Chinese character dictionary 《说文解字》 glosses 摩 as rubbing or grinding. Later uses of 摩 extend to helping one another improve, drawing near, guessing, and wearing away. Those broader uses belong to the 摩 family, so translate 擵 through the language and sentence where it appears.
Is 擵 a variant of 摩?
Yes—擵 is a documented variant of 摩. Dictionaries list 擵 as another written form of 摩, not as a separate character with a new origin. 磨 is different: it has the stone component 石 and shares a traditional “wear away” sense with 摩 through borrowing. In ordinary modern Mandarin, 摩 is the usual choice; preserve 擵 when an exact source or a documented dialect context uses it.
This is a rare, dictionary-level form; 摩 is the familiar choice in ordinary Mandarin writing.
For ordinary Mandarin rubbing or touching, use 摩; keep 擵 for an exact source or its documented dialect context.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why is 擵 missing from text?
It is an encoding workaround: a 2018 archive note says the Japanese character set JIS X 0213 lacks 擵 and uses an annotation instead. The notation stands in for the same character, not a different meaning.
How to type 擵
擵\64F5Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.