What 禱 means
It means prayer, a ritual request, or entreaty. An early Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen, glosses it as “告事求福”: reporting a matter to a spirit and seeking blessing. The Classic of Poetry, an old collection of songs and ritual texts, uses it for sacrifice and prayer. Later use adds an everyday sense of requesting, plus the formal letter closing 至禱, roughly “I earnestly request.” 祷 is the simplified form with the same core meaning; 祈禱 and 禱告 are compounds, not alternate spellings.
Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
2Praying or prayer; a common religious compound.
To pray or say a prayer.
Questions people ask
1Why does 禱 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 禱
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 79B1, then Alt+X to get 禱.
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-79b1”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 79b1, then Enter or Space.
HTML
禱CSS
\79B1Pinyin
Type dǎo, the Mandarin romanization, and choose 禱.
Traditional Cangjie
Use IFGNI for 禱.
Simplified Cangjie
Use IFQKI for 祷, not 禱.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
禱
HTML hex
禱
CSS content
content: "\79B1";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E7%A6%B1
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.