What 茴 means
In 茴香, it names the fennel plant.
The 2024 Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary entry says 茴 is absent from Shuowen, an early Chinese dictionary, and links it to the older form 蘹. The Newly Revised Materia Medica, a Chinese Tang-dynasty medical book completed in 659, records fennel as an herb. The same entry preserves a traditional explanation that the name refers to bringing fragrance back to strongly scented meat.
Food and herb vocabulary.
茴香 means fennel here, not star anise.
Combination ideas
3Fennel, the common compound.
Fennel fruit, used as a spice and in medicine.
A Shaoxing snack named in Lu Xun’s story Kong Yiji; recalled in a 2022 TV feature.
Questions people ask
1Why does 茴 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 茴
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 8334, then Alt+X to get 茴.
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-8334”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 8334, then Enter or Space.
HTML
茴CSS
\8334Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
茴
HTML hex
茴
CSS content
content: "\8334";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%8C%B4
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.