What 熬 means
It means slow cooking or enduring hardship, depending on the word. The Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary, glosses 熬 as 乾煎 (“dry-fry”): 火 points to fire, while 敖 supplies the sound. Chinese compounds also use the cooking sense for staying awake or enduring hardship: 熬夜 means “stay up late,” 熬过 “get through,” and 熬药 “simmer medicine.” Cantonese also uses 捱夜 for staying up late. Japanese dictionaries record roasting, drying, and enduring senses. Modern Chinese uses 煎 for pan-frying food or boiling ingredients for medicine.
Neutral in Chinese; the compound decides whether 熬 refers to cooking or endurance.
Bare 熬 does not by itself mean “stay up late.”
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Who writes 熬
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Related characters
1
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 熬 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.
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How to type or find 熬
- Also called
- áo
- Search it as
- ao · 熬夜 · 熬过 · 熬药 · 煎熬
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
熬\71ACCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.