What 魠 means
A fish name, read tuo, for a wide mouth.
As of 2026, the earliest evidence located here is the Shuowen Jiezi gloss calling it a fish with a gaping mouth. The 魚 side carries the sense of fish; the 乇 side carries the sound. It also turns up in a fish list quoted in the Shiji. As of 2026, no source found here names a single inventor or separate practical purpose.
Later commentaries link it with 鱤, 黃頰, and 魧 as dictionary relations. A Taiwanese dictionary checked in 2026 records 塗魠/土魠 and 土魠魚羹 for the fish eaten as fried pieces in soup. Alone, 魠 reads as classical and obscure — use the compound for food.
Classical and specialized alone; living food vocabulary only in 塗魠 and related compounds.
Alone it reads as an old citation, not a dish.
Questions people ask
1Why does 魠 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 魠
魠\9B60Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.