What 蛪 means
It names a rainbow variant or a cicada-like insect. In Mandarin, ní is roughly “nee” with a rising tone; qiè is roughly “chyeh” with a falling tone. The rainbow reading is a variant graph of 霓 and 蜺. The insect reading appears in 蛪蚼, an old name for a cicada-like insect; dictionaries also record 蛪蠅.
In the “Treatise on the Heavenly Offices” in the Records of the Grand Historian, 蛪 appears in a cloud description likened to a torn banner and read as a rainbow omen. The Jade Chapters, an early Chinese dictionary, also records the character.
Specialized and historical: dictionary and classical-text contexts distinguish its two readings.
If it arrives alone, ask for the sentence or source before choosing between rainbow and insect.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsQuestions people ask
1Can different fonts draw 蛪 differently?
Yes. The active typeface supplies this Han character's drawing, so its stroke shapes can vary across fonts.
How to type 蛪
蛪\86EACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.