What 駆 means
It evokes driving something forward.
The Chinese dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, completed around 100 CE, records 驅 for driving a horse. It analyzes 驅 as 馬 (“horse”) plus 區, the part that supplies its sound.
In Japanese, 駆ける means to run or gallop, and 駆る means to drive or urge. The same idea extends to 駆り立てる (“urge someone on”), 駆除 (“drive pests away”), and 駆動 (“mechanical drive”). If 駆 appears alone, the surrounding word decides which sense fits.
Why do 駆, 驅, and 駈 coexist?
They are related forms, not three separate meanings.
Japanese postwar standardization in 1949 adopted 駆 as the standard form of older 驅; 駈 is a nonstandard variant. Their use changes the written form, not the basic meaning of the Japanese word.
Questions people ask
1Why does 駆 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 駆
駆\99C6Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.