What 閸 means
閸 is a variant of 壼, tied to an inner palace passage.
The classical Chinese dictionaries Shuowen and Erya describe 壼 as a route inside a palace; a Chinese dictionary called Han Dian lists 閸 as its variant. Han Dian’s entry for 壼 also gives senses connected with women’s inner quarters and “broad.”
The Old Zhuang reading of 閸 appears in a separate entry: it pairs the character with the transcription nyaz and the meaning “government office.” Old Zhuang is an earlier writing tradition for the Zhuang language. This reading and sense belong to that entry, not to Mandarin.
How do I type 閸?
Enter ANMLM in Cangjie, or U+95B8 in a Unicode input tool.
Cangjie is an input method for Chinese characters; its code for 閸 is ANMLM. IBus Cangjie’s documented default focuses on common Hong Kong characters; as of 2026, its settings include a “Rare Chinese characters” option. If the candidate list omits 閸, that setting may expose it.
Fonts draw this text character, so its shape can vary. A missing-glyph box means the current font has no glyph for 閸.
Its reading depends on the language and dictionary context: the Chinese and Old Zhuang entries differ.
Alone, it does not tell readers whether the intended sense is the Chinese palace term or the Old Zhuang office term.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Will 閸 look the same in every font?
No. Fonts draw it differently, and a box in place of the character means the current font has no glyph for it.
How to type 閸
閸\95B8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.