What 虃 means
The Erya, an early Chinese reference book, lists 虃 in Shicao, its chapter on plants. The entry glosses it as 百足; later dictionaries give 百足草.
The Erya’s plant chapter is conventionally dated to the span from the Warring States period into the early Han dynasty. A note from the Qing period links 虃 to 韱, a character glossed as “mountain chive”; that identification remains disputed.
Classical-dictionary register; it can feel out of place in everyday messages.
In an ordinary chat, a reader may take it for a typo.
Questions people ask
2Does 虃 mean centipede?
No. The Erya entry uses 百足 as a plant gloss, and later dictionaries give 百足草. The centipede sense of 百足 in other contexts does not make 虃 an animal name.
Why does 虃 appear as a square?
It can. If your browser or document app shows a square, the active font may not include 虃; the text can still be intact.
How to type 虃
虃\8643Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.