What 选 means
It means “choose” or “select.” In 选择, it means choosing; 选项 is an option; and 选举 refers to electing or an election. The full word tells you what is being selected.
An inscription from the middle Western Zhou period, an early era of Chinese history, contains a form identified with 選 on the Nine-Year Wei Ding, an inscribed bronze vessel. It writes 䍻, “lamb,” for its sound, not for the modern meaning “choose.” The Shuowen dictionary records both “send or dispatch” and “select”; which sense motivated the form remains uncertain.
Ordinary vocabulary; the surrounding word supplies the subject, from choosing an item to elections or selected works.
For traditional Chinese or Japanese text, use 選; 选 is the simplified Chinese form.
Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 选 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 选
选\9009Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.