What 菢 means
菢 means to brood over eggs.
A bird does this by sitting on its eggs until they hatch. The Tang-dynasty poet Han Yu uses 菢 in 啄菢 for a bird brooding. Chinese dictionaries also link 菢 with 勽 and 抱; 抱 is the ordinary modern character for holding or embracing.
What does 菢 mean in Cantonese?
In Cantonese, 菢 can also mean waiting for someone to appear.
菢蛋 refers to brooding eggs. As of 2026, Cantonese dictionaries also document 菢 for staying somewhere while waiting for someone; one example describes reporters waiting all morning for a chief executive to appear. The sentence tells you which sense fits.
Use 菢 with context
Standalone, 菢 is a rare character that may leave readers guessing. It fits Cantonese writing, a classical quotation, or a deliberate note about this uncommon word; elsewhere, a familiar word for brooding is clearer.
If someone sends it, read the surrounding words before deciding whether they mean eggs or waiting. A brief gloss helps when the reader may not know the character.
Rare outside regional or literary writing; Cantonese dictionaries record it as a verb, and many readers may need a gloss.
Alone in a mixed-language chat, 菢 may look like an unknown character.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
2Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 菢 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 菢
菢\83E2Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.