What 駹 means
A horse with a white face or forehead.
As of 2026, the earliest known written definition is in Shuowen Jiezi, an Eastern Han dictionary. It describes 駹 as a horse with a white face and forehead.
The written form also hints at its meaning: 馬 is the horse element, while 尨 supplies the sound. On Han-era bamboo slips—thin strips used for writing—horse registers list 駹 beside practical details such as sex, age, and an identifying brand mark.
Why does 駹 have several historical glosses?
The shared thread is marked colouring, but context changes the reading.
Historical dictionaries preserve three settings: a white-faced horse; a variegated sacrificial animal in Zhou ritual language; and a blue horse in Han historical writing. These are context-specific glosses, not interchangeable everyday meanings.
The Han historical name 冉駹 refers to southwestern peoples and their territory. Here 駹 is part of an ethnonym—a name for a people—not a horse-colour label.
Classical or technical; it reads naturally in a dictionary, historical text, or specialist discussion.
Do not use it as a generic word for horse; it names a specific coat marking.
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsDon't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 駹 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 駹
駹\99F9Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.