What 陔 means
It marks an ordered rise: a step, terrace, or raised bank.
Read it as gai, Mandarin gāi: 阜 signals raised ground while 亥 gives the sound. Its core job was naming a physical tier. The earliest defensible form is Western Han, with no single inventor; Shuowen Jiezi glosses it as the sequence of steps.
The classics stretch it: 三陔 means shrine levels, 南陔 means a field bank and a song title, and 陔夏 cues ceremonial departure music. Do not use it as modern slang; 垓 is the related loan or variant form.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Can 陔 look different?
Yes. Fonts draw it differently; Taiwan's 2024 CNS listing shows multiple styles for one character.
How to type 陔
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 9654, then Alt+X to get 陔.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-9654”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 9654, then Enter or Space.
HTML
陔CSS
\9654How to type 陔
Type gai in a Chinese pinyin IME, then choose 陔; Mandarin is gāi.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
陔
HTML hex
陔
CSS content
content: "\9654";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E9%99%94
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.