What 甛 means
It means “sweet”; 甛 is the variant spelling of 甜.
In Mandarin, it is pronounced tián (Pinyin, roughly “tyen” with a rising tone). Older glosses also give “good” or “beautiful.”
The earliest dated witness is the Northern Wei tomb inscription 傅姆王遺女墓誌, carved in 521. In Ming- and Qing-era Korean poems written in classical Chinese, 甛 appears around food, hardship, and sleep; the classical phrase 黑甛 can mean deep sleep.
Why does 甛 differ from 甜?
They are documented forms of the same word.
The variant record traces an older Chinese writing style called seal script, with 甘 on the left and 舌 on the right; modern 甜 reverses them. Two old Chinese dictionaries, 玉篇零卷 and 龍龕手鑑, record 甛 in relation to 甜. Dictionary records also preserve 餂 as an older form in this written family.
Variant and historical register: choosing 甛 signals an orthographic form, not a different word.
For ordinary modern Chinese, use 甜 unless the variant itself matters.
Who writes 甛
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Related characters
2
Questions people ask
2why does a lookup for 甛 point to 甜
Because 甛 is catalogued as a variant of 甜, some dictionaries file it under 甜’s entry.
Will another font change what 甛 means?
No. A font can draw its strokes differently, but the encoded character remains 甛.
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How to type or find 甛
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- 甛 meaning · 甛 vs 甜 · 甛字 · 異體字 · 异体字 · 甜 variant · Chinese variant character
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甛\751BCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.