Japanese character 辷

It means to slide, glide, slip, or lose your footing.

In Japanese, 辷 is read すべる (roughly “soo-beh-roo”). It is a kokuji, a character coined in Japan. Its form pairs 辶, a movement component, with 一, a flat line, to picture traveling across a flat surface.

An entry for 辷 appears in 字鏡集, a dictionary from Japan’s medieval Kamakura period, compiled by 1245 or earlier. Older dictionary glosses also include smooth or forceful movement, retreating, and falling.

Which spelling should I use: 辷る or 滑る?

Use 滑る in ordinary modern Japanese; 辷る is the marked choice.

The same verb can mean moving smoothly or losing your footing. In set phrases, 口が辷る means speaking carelessly, 試験に辷る means failing an exam, and 地辷り means a landslide.

Japan’s 1946 Tōyō Kanji policy set a recommended range of characters for public writing and advised replacing words outside it or writing them in kana. A later reference account says choosing 滑 for すべる made 辷’s decline decisive. Keep 辷る when preserving a source or deliberately evoking older Japanese writing.

Does 辷 mean “slip” in Chinese?

No; that sense belongs to Japanese, not everyday Chinese.

Mandarin dictionaries give 辷 the reading yī, roughly “ee” on a high, level tone, like 一 (“one”). Korean entries give it the reading il, the same as 일 (“one”). Both also associate it with Japanese place or personal names; neither reading means “to slide.”