What 예 means
On its own, 예 is a respectful Korean “yes.”
It can answer an older person's call, a senior's question, or an instruction. In a longer word such as 예술 (“art”), 예 is just one syllable; the whole word sets its meaning.
Is 예 an enthusiastic yes?
Not necessarily; acknowledgment is the safer reading.
A bare 예 can acknowledge what you said without showing that the sender likes the plan. If it arrives as 예? after something you said, the sender may be asking you to repeat it; restate your message before assuming they agreed.
Where did 예 come from?
It is a Hangul syllable built from alphabetic parts.
Hangul was created to represent Korean speech sounds directly. Earlier, Korean was also written using Hanja, Chinese characters used in Korean texts. Hangul's creation is recorded in 1443, and its explanatory Hunminjeongeum material dates to 1446.
In 예, the initial letter ㅇ combines with the vowel ㅖ. Hangul groups letters into square syllable blocks, a layout connected to the convention used for Hanja; the letter shapes themselves are not direct copies of Chinese ideographs.
예 is a respectful Korean reply, including to a senior's call, question, or instruction.
A question mark changes the cue: 예? can sound like “Pardon?”, not an affirmative yes.
Part of the collection
Who writes 예
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Don't confuse it with
1
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 예 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.
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How to type or find 예
- Search it as
- yes in Korean · 예 meaning · 예 vs 네 · type 예 on Korean keyboard · Hangul 예 origin
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
예\C608Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.