What 蜾 means
It is the first character of 蜾蠃, a Chinese wasp name.
In Chinese, 蜾 appears chiefly in 蜾蠃, the name for a potter wasp: a solitary wasp that builds its nest from mud.
The Book of Songs poem “Xiao Wan” includes the line “螟蛉有子，蜾蠃負之,” about a wasp carrying off an insect larva called 螟蛉.
Why is 蜾蠃 linked to adoption?
An old account of wasp behavior became an adoption metaphor.
Classical commentary said the wasp carried off a 螟蛉 larva, warmed it, and raised it as its own. Potter wasps actually paralyze prey and store it in a mud nest as food for their own larvae.
That story survives in 螟蛉子, a literary Chinese term for an adopted child. It is an old literary image, not a description of how the wasp breeds.
Rare and literary; 蜾 usually appears within the wasp name 蜾蠃.
Alone, 蜾 does not identify the wasp; look for 蜾蠃 or nearby context.
Who writes 蜾
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsA character lookup or text fragment; surrounding context tells why it was sent.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
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Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 蜾 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.
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How to type or find 蜾
- Search it as
- guǒ · guǒluǒ · guo · 蜾蠃 · potter wasp · mud-nesting wasp · 螟蛉子
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
蜾\873ECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.