What ᲂ means
It is a narrow Church Slavonic form of On.
Church Slavonic Narrow On appears in Poluustav, a style of Church Slavonic book lettering. The documented printed-book corpus covers 1550–1700. Early print allowed the form in the middle or at the end of a word, with or without an accent; later books often used it for unaccented On.
Why is ᲂ different from о?
ᲂ is a historical form; о is the ordinary Cyrillic letter.
Its use varied by print tradition. A 2013 account describes it in Russian Old Ritualist books, says it fell out of Muscovite Synodal printing, and records it in Kievan Synodal editions. In Synodal spelling, ᲂу is Onik: a two-letter spelling for /u/, with ᲂ first.
Why does ᲂ look wrong?
A missing shape usually means the font lacks this glyph.
The character stays encoded even if a font shows a box or substitutes another glyph. A font with historical Cyrillic support may draw it distinctly, or close to ordinary о. Check the font before reading a missing or substituted shape as a different character.
A historical and liturgical print form; it signals Church Slavonic typesetting rather than everyday Cyrillic prose.
Do not read its narrow shape as a different vowel or casually replace it in a historical transcription.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᲂ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsNarrow On; its placement and accent rules were not yet fixed.
Don't confuse it with
3
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
2Is ᲂ a separate modern Cyrillic letter?
No. It is an encoded historical form of Cyrillic On, used for a typographic or spelling distinction rather than a different modern vowel sound.
Why does ᲂ show as a box?
The font may not include its glyph. Try a font with historical Cyrillic support or a character viewer; the encoded character and its displayed shape are separate things.
More like this
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How to type or find ᲂ
- Also called
- Narrow On
- Search it as
- Church Slavonic · Poluustav · Onik · Old Believer Cyrillic · historical Cyrillic O · Cyrillic variant
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᲂ\1C82Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.