What 隺 means
It means “rising high”; the crane sense is secondary.
A Han-era entry in the Shuowen, an early Chinese dictionary, defines 隺 as “rising high” and explains its form as a bird (隹) passing beyond a boundary. Later dictionaries record 隺然 for a lofty manner and a bird flying high. In 鶴, the traditional character for “crane,” 隺 is the sound-bearing part; dictionaries also connect them as variant forms. For the ordinary word “crane,” use 鶴 or 鹤, not standalone 隺.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 隺 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 隺
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 96BA, then Alt+X to get 隺.
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-96ba”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 96ba, then Enter or Space.
HTML
隺CSS
\96BACangjie
Cangjie code for 隺 is OBG; enter it in a Cangjie Chinese input method editor (IME).
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
隺
HTML hex
隺
CSS content
content: "\96BA";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E9%9A%BA
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.