Hunger Character 飢

It names a shortage of food: hunger, starvation, or famine.

飢 is an old written word for hunger, not a modern invented sign. The earliest source I could verify for this exact graph is the Eastern Han Shuowen Jiezi, completed around 100 CE: it defines 飢 as hungry and analyzes it as 食, the food component, plus 几 as the sound component. The checked evidence does not establish an oracle-bone or bronze ancestor for this exact graph.

Why does 飢 also point to famine?

Its famine reading comes from its relationship with 饑.

Older Chinese lexicons separated 飢, being hungry, from 饑, grain failure and famine; later usage lets them overlap. In Japanese, 飢 is the standard form in 飢える, 飢餓, and 飢饉: bodily hunger, severe starvation, and harvest-linked disaster.

Japanese also uses lack as metaphor: 飢える can mean starved for affection, knowledge, or another strongly desired thing, without mentioning food.

What does 飢 mean when someone sends it?

Read a lone 飢 as a terse, serious hunger reference.

It is a typed CJK character, not an emoji reaction, so your font draws its shape. Context must supply language and scale: literal hunger, famine, or Japanese metaphorical lack. For a plain meal update, write a full phrase instead.