What 笯 means
A literary Chinese word for a bamboo birdcage.
The Shiji, a history, preserves a version of the Chu Ci line 鳳皇在笯兮 (“the phoenix is in a bamboo cage”) in a text from before 86 BCE. That dates the surviving text, not the character's origin. The Shuowen Jiezi, an early dictionary, explains 竹 (“bamboo”) as the meaning part and 奴 as the sound part. The lexicon Fangyan also records 笯 among regional cage words in southern areas.
What does 笯 mean when sent?
In the idiom, the caged phoenix stands for blocked talent.
In 鳳凰在笯, the phoenix represents a talented person unable to fulfill their ambitions. Sent alone, 笯 gives little evidence about the sender's intent; its literary meaning depends on context.
Classical and literary; it reads like an allusion or a character lookup, not an everyday word.
A box means the font in use lacks this glyph; the intended character and its meaning are unchanged.
Who writes 笯
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Related characters
1
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does 笯 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.
More like this
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How to type or find 笯
- Search it as
- birdcage · bird cage · bamboo cage · caged phoenix · phoenix in a cage · nu · nú · 鳳凰在笯
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
笯\7B2FCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.