What 许 means
Read the whole Chinese word. 允许 means “allow,” 许诺 “promise,” 也许 “maybe,” and 许多 “many.” As a surname, 许 is commonly written Xu or Hsu; the name identifies a person rather than granting permission.
An ancestor of traditional 許 appears in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, writing on bronze vessels. In that graph, 言 is the speech component and 午 supplies the sound; Warring States texts use it for agreement. After the Six Dynasties, 许 also gained an approximate sense; after the Qing period, 也许 became established as “perhaps.”
不许 is a firm prohibition; 也许 leaves room for doubt.
A bare 许 is not a reliable stand-alone “yes”; read it in its word or name.
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Who writes 许
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Don't confuse it with
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Related characters
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Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 许 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 许
- Also called
- xǔ · Xu · Hsu
- Search it as
- xu3 · 许 meaning · 许 surname · Xu surname · allow · permit · promise · 也许
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
许\8BB8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.