What 眔 means
眔 first meant tears; later use covers “and,” “with,” and “reach.”
眔 appears in oracle-bone inscriptions; Western Zhou bronze inscriptions show the graph used for reaching a boundary, joining terms, and personal names. Its early picture joins an eye with falling water, a written image for tears or weeping.
Han-era Shuowen glosses it as “eyes reaching one another.” Classical citations connect the later connective uses with 逮 or 暨, while 及 supplies the core “reach” gloss. A Japanese kanji reference preserves the related “reach; and” reading. Read 眔 from its sentence, not from the tear picture alone.
Archaic and philological: use 眔 for a historical quotation or character study, not as a casual reaction.
Its tear-like shape does not guarantee a “tears” reading.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
2Is 眔 an old form of 泪?
Not exactly. Its earliest graph is described as tears, while its historical connective uses are glossed “and,” “with,” or “reach”; use 泪 or 淚 only when the source calls for it.
Why does 眔 look different in different fonts?
It can. 眔 is drawn by the active Han font, so stroke proportions vary by typeface; compare the components rather than expecting vendor emoji artwork.
How to type 眔
眔\7714Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.