What 蠂 means
Alone, 蠂 is glossed as a locust.
The historical Chinese rhyme dictionary 《集韻》, completed in 1039, records its pronunciation. 《類篇》, a dictionary completed in 1066, glosses it as an insect, specifically a locust; a rhyme dictionary groups characters by pronunciation.
When can 蠂 mean butterfly?
Inside 蝴蠂, 蠂 is used for “butterfly.”
As of 2026-09-12, this variant spelling appears in a university-library article about butterfly binding and a Taiwan government butterfly guide. The connection to 蝶 is lexical; it does not make 蠂 and 蝶 interchangeable on their own.
If 蠂 appears alone, the dictionary gloss is the safest reading unless the surrounding sentence points to the butterfly compound.
Dictionary-like and source-specific; alone, it reads like a quoted or reference-text character, not casual chat.
For butterfly, use 蝴蝶; 蠂 alone is not the standard form.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsDon't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Does 蠂 change shape between fonts?
It can. 蠂 is a text character drawn by the font in use, so its stroke design can vary while the character stays the same.
How to type 蠂
蠂\8802Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.