Biting-fly character

蜹 names a small biting fly, roughly a gnat or midge.

Chinese dictionaries treat 蜹 as a marked variant of 蚋, the preferred form for this insect. The Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary, records a regional split: Qin and Jin used 蜹, while Chu used 蚊. A Warring States-era passage in the Chinese philosophical work Xunzi says “醯酸而蜹聚焉” (“sour vinegar draws the gnats”), in a comparison about how things gather with what suits them. Japanese dictionaries also use 蜹 for biting flies and mosquitoes, with readings ぶゆ, ぶよ and ぶと. Fonts may draw the glyph differently; a blank box means the chosen font lacks it.