What 鏨 means
It names a metal chisel and the act of engraving.
The written form is defined in the Shuowen Jiezi, completed in 100 CE, as a small chisel, analyzed with 金 “metal” and 斬 “cut.” The tool is older than the entry: metal chasing appears on early bronzes, and a study of the Jin Hou Su bells identifies mechanically chiseled Western Zhou inscriptions from c. 846 BCE. Its job is cutting or chasing patterns and characters into hard surfaces.
What does 鏨 mean when sent alone?
Treat a standalone 鏨 as a lookup or craft reference.
In Chinese it works both ways: noun for the chisel, verb for engraving. Japanese keeps 鏨 for たがね (tagane), the steel metalworking chisel. If you see 錾, that is the simplified Chinese counterpart. Script and the surrounding word decide the intended reading.
How do I type 鏨?
Use an input method, then check the form.
For Mandarin, type zan and pick the zàn candidate; choose 鏨 for traditional Chinese or 錾 for simplified Chinese. For Japanese, enter たがね or tagane. Cangjie references list 十中金 for 鏨. If the character is missing from your keyboard, copy it from the palette above.
Technical and historical in Chinese craft writing; in Japanese, a non-jōyō kanji for metalworking.
Sent alone it looks like an unexplained technical character; add the surrounding word.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 鏨 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 鏨
鏨\93E8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.