What 碛 means
It names a stony shoal or gravelly ground.
The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese character dictionary, defines it as a stony place by water.
Why does 碛 mean desert?
The desert sense grows from the same stony terrain.
In the Tang period, frontier writing uses 莫贺延碛 for a barren crossing and 碛西 for the western frontier.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 碛 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.
How to type 碛
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 789B, then Alt+X to get 碛.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-789b”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 789b, then Enter or Space.
HTML
碛CSS
\789BPinyin IME
For Mandarin, enter qi4 in a Pinyin input method and choose 碛 from the candidates.
Cangjie
Enter MRQMO for 碛; traditional 磧 uses MRQMC.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
碛
HTML hex
碛
CSS content
content: "\789B";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E7%A2%9B
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.