What 蛷 means
It names a many-legged insect, with an older medical sense.
The compound 蛷螋 names 蠼螋, an earwig-like insect.
Older medical writing also uses 蛷 for a sore associated with the insect. The classical Chinese text 淮南子 uses that sore to show how usefulness depends on who needs something.
Is 蛷 related to 𧒔, 𧋛, or 求?
Yes: these forms belong to its written history.
The early Chinese character dictionary 《說文》 records 𧒔 for a many-legged insect and 𧋛 as an alternate form with the insect marker 虫. Later dictionaries and texts use 蛷.
Oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions preserve 求 as the earliest written form of 蛷; studies of ancient writing treat 求 as its original form. As 求 came to mean “seek” or “ask” in Chinese, writers used forms marked with 虫 to distinguish the insect sense.
How do I type 蛷?
Use a Chinese input method and select its character candidate.
With Chinese pinyin input, type qiu and choose 蛷. Cangjie is a Chinese shape-based input method; its listed code for this character is LIIJE.
蛷 is drawn by the selected font. If a box appears, the font lacks this glyph; switch to a CJK font that includes it.
Literary and specialist; the surrounding word or sentence usually supplies the needed context.
Alone, it can name the insect or an older sore associated with it.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsQuestions people ask
1Why does 蛷 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 蛷
蛷\86F7Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.