What 臬 means
“Target,” “sun-measuring post,” or “standard.”
Oracle-bone inscriptions (divination records carved on bone or shell) use 臬 as a personal name. Its senses include an arrow target and a post used to measure the sun’s shadow; that measuring-post sense extends to “standard” or “rule.”
In Qing-era Chinese usage, 臬司 and 臬台 were informal titles for a province’s senior judicial official.
Formal and literary; its modern use is chiefly in compounds such as 圭臬.
Combination ideas
3a standard or rule
to treat something as an authoritative standard
a Qing-era title for a provincial judicial official
Questions people ask
1Why does 臬 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 臬
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 81EC, then Alt+X to get 臬.
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-81ec”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 81ec, then Enter or Space.
HTML
臬CSS
\81ECMandarin Pinyin
Mandarin is niè, roughly “nyeh” with a falling tone. On a Pinyin keyboard, type nie or nie4, then select 臬.
Wubi input
In the Wubi Chinese input method, type THSU, then select 臬.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
臬
HTML hex
臬
CSS content
content: "\81EC";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%87%AC
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.