What 범 means
Alone, 범 means “tiger.” In compounds, it can have other roots: 범위 means “scope”; 범하다 means “violate.”
The earliest direct record for 범 is in the 1446 Hunminjeongeum Haerye, a guide to the Korean script. 호랑이 joins Chinese-derived words for “tiger” and “wolf” with Korean -이; by the 19th century, it meant only tiger.
In premodern Korean stories, before modern times, tigers could be tricksters, divine messengers, or protectors. Nationalists used them as resistance imagery in 1910–45; the 1980s Olympics helped make the tiger a national symbol.
Standard, but less common in everyday speech than 호랑이.
Does 범 always mean tiger? No; compounds may use another root.
Questions people ask
1Why does 범 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 범
범\BC94Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.