What 霺 means
霺 means fine rain or drizzle. Shuowen, an early Chinese dictionary, defines 溦 as small rain but does not list 霺. Song-era Jiyun, a later Chinese dictionary arranged by rhyme, records 霺 as a variant of 溦. The two forms write the same rain word.
In a poem in the Japanese collection Man’yōshū, the pair 霏霺 evokes night mist. If 霺 displays as a box, the font in use does not include the glyph.
Questions people ask
1Why does 霺 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 霺
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 973A, then Alt+X to get 霺.
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-973a”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 973a, then Enter or Space.
HTML
霺CSS
\973ACangjie
In Cangjie, enter MBHOK for 霺.
Unicode hexadecimal input
Enter 973A in a Unicode hexadecimal input method and confirm, if the app supports it.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
霺
HTML hex
霺
CSS content
content: "\973A";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E9%9C%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.