What 荏 means
荏 names perilla in plant compounds; the surrounding word sets the sense.
Early classical texts, including the Book of Songs (an early Chinese poetry collection), use 荏 in 荏菽 for a bean crop and 荏染 for softness or pliancy. The Han-era Chinese character dictionary Shuowen glosses 桂荏 as a name for 蘇 (perilla) and analyzes 荏 as the plant marker 艹 plus sound-bearing 任.
Japanese historical records show 荏胡麻 seeds eaten as food and 荏油 used for lamp oil and lacquer work. In Japanese, the reading is え (a short “e” vowel); a Mandarin Pinyin IME enters its reading as ren3.
Read the full word around 荏 before choosing its sense.
Bare 荏 does not tell you whether the plant, softness, or passing-time sense is intended.
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsQuestions people ask
1Why does 荏 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 荏
荏\834FCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.