What 蟊 means
It names a crop pest; in 蟊贼, it signals serious harm.
The earliest clear literary trail is in the Classic of Poetry, a corpus spanning the Western Zhou to Spring and Autumn. There, 蟊 belongs to a crop-pest set with 螟、螣 and 贼: it is glossed as attacking seedling roots, while 贼 attacks the joints or stalk. Its written job was to name a real agricultural threat.
The Shuowen tradition analyzes it as an insect-category character with 矛 supplying the sound. As checked in 2026, the CUHK historical-form database shows a small-seal form but no oracle-bone or bronze example for 蟊 itself; Unicode record should not be mistaken for the sign origin.
What does 蟊贼 mean?
It condemns a harmful person or force, not an ordinary pickpocket.
That agricultural pairing later carried the same ravaging image into political and social accusation. 毛贼 sounds alike but means a petty thief; swapping the first character changes both the target and the severity.
On its own, 蟊 reads as classical; 蟊贼 is a formal, severe condemnation.
Do not use it for a small thief; that is 毛贼.
Who writes 蟊
Loading…
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsA crop pest associated with seedling roots.
Don't confuse it with
1毛贼 Same sound as 蟊贼, but it means a petty thief rather than a force harming a state or people.
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does 蟊 look different in different fonts?
It can. 蟊 is a font-drawn CJK character, so proportions and fallback designs may vary without changing its identity.
More like this
9
How to type or find 蟊
- Search it as
- mao · maozei · 蟊贼 · 蝥贼 · 毛贼 · 害虫 · 虫害 · pest
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
蟊\87CACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.