What 覺 means
Awareness, realization, or sleep: the word and pronunciation decide.
It combines seeing with sound: 見, meaning see, plus a shortened 學 for sound. Its recognisable form reaches Warring States material, with Qin-slip and Western Han examples. The core sense was waking into awareness.
In Chinese, jué means feel or realize; jiào means sleep. Japanese 覚 covers remembering and waking.
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readings覺得 / 覺察
Chinese jué: feel, think, or notice.
睡覺 / 午覺
Chinese jiào: sleep or nap.
感覺 / 知覺
Chinese: sensation or perception.
Japanese 覚悟
Japanese: resolve or readiness.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does 覺 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.
How to type 覺
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 89BA, then Alt+X to get 覺.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-89ba”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 89ba, then Enter or Space.
HTML
覺CSS
\89BAHow to type 覺
Traditional Chinese Cangjie: enter HBBUU, then select 覺.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
覺
HTML hex
覺
CSS content
content: "\89BA";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E8%A6%BA
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.