Chinese character for porridge

It means porridge or gruel. The Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese dictionary, says 粖 was the Liangzhou word for 鬻, an old word for porridge. Later glosses also give 粥 and 糜, words for porridge or gruel.

A tomb slip from the Qin period contains a disputed graph that scholar Xiao Xu reads as an early form of 粖 in a cattle-feeding recipe; it is a possible early trace, not a secure origin. Buddhist texts in the Tang period used 粖香 for powdered incense. Tang commentators called 粖 the wrong graph, while translations in the Northern Song helped make that spelling common.