What 骜 means
A fine horse; of a person, gifted or headstrong.
The Han dynasty dictionary Shuowen Jiezi glosses 驁 as a fine horse. 骜 uses 马 (traditional 馬, “horse”) and 敖, which hints at its sound.
桀骜不驯 applies the unruly-horse image to someone who will not submit.
Literary; praise or criticism depends on context.
In 桀骜不驯, it is criticism.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 骜 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 骜
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 9A9C, then Alt+X to get 骜.
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-9a9c”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 9a9c, then Enter or Space.
HTML
骜CSS
\9A9CCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
骜
HTML hex
骜
CSS content
content: "\9A9C";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E9%AA%9C
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.