Cyrillic Letter Multiocular O

It marks the “many-eyed” part of a Church Slavonic phrase.

In an old Church Slavonic phrase for “many-eyed seraphim,” ꙮ is an O-shaped letter decorated with eye-like forms. It is a manuscript spelling choice, not an everyday replacement for the Cyrillic letter о.

In a historical text, read it as a rare letterform. In a casual post, its many eyes can carry the joke on their own.

Where did multiocular O come from?

It grew from a manuscript spelling that made the word visible.

The earliest manuscript evidence described in Unicode’s proposal is a Psalter—a book of Psalms—written around 1429. Yefim Karsky documented the glyph in 1928. Its eye-like design echoes the “many-eyed” meaning of the word it spells.

It belongs to a group of ocular O letters: ꙩ uses one eye-like mark, Ꙫ and Ꙭ use paired forms, and ꙮ suggests many eyes. The paired forms could be used instead, so the many-eyed design is a marked visual choice.

What does ꙮ mean in a message?

It can come across as an obscure-letter joke or an uncanny eye image.

By 2023, online discussions had reused ꙮ for “biblically accurate” angel imagery and ominous eye jokes. That modern reading sits alongside its manuscript history.

Someone familiar with the historical spelling may see a reference; another reader may take it as a joke or wonder whether the character rendered correctly. Add context when the intended reading matters.