What 혹 means
It can mean “perhaps” or “a lump”; context settles which.
An 8th-century Silla Idu text—an older way to write Korean with Chinese characters—glosses 若 as 혹 in a conditional phrase. The adverbial sense is associated with Chinese character 或; this record does not establish one origin for every modern sense.
Combination ideas
2“By any chance”; it can soften a question.
Formal “or”; it introduces an alternative.
Questions people ask
1Why does 혹 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 혹
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType D639, then Alt+X to get 혹.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “hangul syllable hog”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType d639, then Enter or Space.
HTML
혹CSS
\D639Korean keyboard
How to type 혹: enter ㅎ, ㅗ, then ㄱ; the input method combines them. Unicode can represent the result as a precomposed syllable or an equivalent sequence of Hangul letters.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
혹
HTML hex
혹
CSS content
content: "\D639";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%ED%98%B9
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.