What 蠡 means
范蠡, 蠡县, and 蠡湖 take lǐ in Mandarin; 以蠡測海 and 蠡測 take lí. In the lí reading, 蠡 names a dipper made from bottle gourd; the idiom turns measuring the sea with a tiny scoop into an image of limited knowledge.
The historical dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (《说文解字》) records an old seal-script form, an early formal style of Chinese writing, and glosses 蠡 as an insect gnawing into wood. The wood-boring and gourd-scoop senses are distinct uses of the character.
How is 蠡 pronounced?
Read lǐ in names; read lí for the gourd dipper.
In Mandarin pinyin, the Latin-letter spelling system, lǐ has the third tone, which dips low then rises; lí has the second tone, which rises.
Literary and context-bound; names, place names, and classical phrases supply the reading.
Read the whole word: 范蠡 is lǐ; 以蠡測海 is lí.
Who writes 蠡
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsNo fixed reading follows from the isolated character; use the surrounding word.
Related characters
4
Questions people ask
3Does 蠡 have only two readings?
No. Historical dictionaries record other, more specialized readings; lǐ in names and lí for the gourd scoop are the useful distinction for the examples here.
Can fonts draw 蠡 differently?
Yes. As of 2026-10-08, Unicode's Han guidance says regional font conventions can draw one encoded Han character differently. A changed outline alone does not make it a different character.
Was 蠡湖 named after Fan Li?
Partly. Local tradition connects the Wuxi lake with the historical figure 范蠡, but older records call it 五里湖 or 漕湖. A Jiangsu local-history account says guidebooks in the 1930s helped popularize 蠡湖.
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How to type or find 蠡
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- lǐ · lí · 蠡 meaning · 蠡 pronunciation · 蠡怎么读 · 蠡怎么输入 · 范蠡 · 蠡测
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- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
蠡\8821li and choose from candidates; word context narrows the choice.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.