What ᅻ means
It fills the vowel position in a historical Hangul syllable block. Hangul syllables combine letters called jamo; this one is a vowel jamo. It can follow an initial consonant and may come before a final consonant. Some older combinations have no single precomposed Unicode syllable.
The original guide to the Korean alphabet, Hunminjeongeum, is first recorded in 1443; its explanatory book appeared in 1446. Those dates place Hangul's syllable-block design in its early history, not the origin of ᅻ as an individual character.
How do I type ᅻ?
Use an input method built for old Hangul. This is an archaic vowel jamo, so standard modern Korean syllable entry may not expose it. A Unicode-aware old-Hangul input method can enter such letters.
A lone vowel can appear with an invisible filler at the start of its syllable block. With compatible font coverage and text shaping, adjoining old jamo can display as one block.
Why does ᅻ look like ㅝ?
They are raised and lower forms in the same spelling history. The historical spelling changed from a raised shape to the lower ㅝ form, which became ordinary modern writing. The change affected the outline, not the vowel's role in the syllable.
Historical and technical: it is an old vowel component in Hangul spelling, not a whole word.
For historical transcription, do not replace ᅻ with ㅝ.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᅻ
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Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ᅻ render as a box?
A font or shaping gap. The font may not contain this archaic vowel, or the text engine may not join old Hangul jamo; try an app and font with archaic Hangul support.
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How to type or find ᅻ
- Search it as
- ᅻ · old Hangul · archaic Hangul · old jamo · eou · ㅝ · weo
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᅻ\117BCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.