What 眘 means
It is an old variant of 慎, meaning “be careful.”
That written family predates this exact form: 慎 appears on Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, and variants occur in Chu manuscripts, Qin text slips, the Shuowen (an early Chinese character dictionary), and later regular script. Other connected old forms include 昚 and 𡺊.
Can 眘 carry other meanings?
In classical texts, 慎 can mean more than caution.
It can also express concern or fear, quietness, emphasis, or a prohibition like “do not.” These are contextual uses of the same word family, not a new modern meaning for 眘; read the sentence around it.
What does 眘 mean when someone sends it?
Read it as 慎 unless the message clearly uses it as a name.
眘 appears in the historical personal name Zhao 眘, used by Southern Song Emperor Xiaozong. Around 1190–1194, a Southern Song edition omitted the last stroke from 慎 in ordinary passages to avoid writing the emperor’s taboo name. In modern Chinese text, 眘 signals historical or variant spelling and may be mistaken for a typo.
Historical or name-specific; in ordinary Chinese writing, it marks an older variant of the familiar caution character 慎.
In ordinary writing, 慎 is expected; 眘 can look like a typo.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 眘 appear as an empty box?
Your font may not include this character's glyph. Unicode still identifies 眘; the square is a display fallback and does not change the character.
How to type 眘
眘\7718Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.