Downward Facing Notched Hook With Dot

It marks a specific feast-day instruction in a Church Slavonic typicon. A typicon is a book that sets out the order of Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic services. A Forefeast is the period before a major feast; an Afterfeast is the period after it. In N. S. Syrnikov’s system, 🤋 marks one of those days when the Octoechos—a cycle of hymns arranged in eight tones—is not chanted and Kontakia (short hymns) are appointed for both the feast and the saint.

The wider family of typicon symbols is traced to a Greek document from the 11th century. Syrnikov’s system drew on older marks associated with Gennadius of Novgorod, who flourished around 1500; the exact hook-and-dot form is documented in a practical manual by Syrnikov from 1910. The mark compresses several service directions into one calendar sign.

Someone sent me 🤋—what should I read into it?

Its documented reading is a specialist liturgical one. The character’s meaning belongs to Church Slavonic service-calendar notation.

If it appears in an ordinary message without a calendar or service context, ask the sender what they mean. The character alone does not establish that they intended Syrnikov’s notation.

How is 🤋 different from 🤉?

The dot adds two Kontakia; the notch marks no Octoechos. The companion 🤉 lacks the dot and marks the same feast-period setting without the two-Kontakia instruction. The unnotched dotted companion 🤊 belongs to a different branch: its Octoechos is chanted.

In Syrnikov’s printed notation, a black dot puts the feast’s Kontakion after Ode 3 and the saint’s after Ode 6; red reverses the order. An ode is a section of the canon, a sequence of liturgical hymns. The encoded character does not preserve the printed dot’s color, so plain text loses the detail that sets the order.