What 영 means
Its meaning depends on the Korean word around it. 영 can mean zero, “not at all,” or a spirit or deity; it also appears in words such as 영어 (“English”) and 영혼 (“soul”).
Hanja are Chinese characters used in some Korean writing to distinguish words with the same Hangul spelling. 零 is used for the zero word, 靈 for the spirit sense, and 英 in 영어. These are distinct roots, not stages in one symbol’s changing meaning.
Where did 영 come from?
It belongs to Hangul, an alphabet made to write Korean speech. A Hangul syllable block represents speech sounds; its shape is not a picture of zero or a spirit.
Hangul’s first recorded account dates to 1443, and an explanatory book about the script appeared in 1446.
Modern Korean spelling was based on a unified draft in 1933 and partly revised in 1988.
How do I type 영?
Switch to Korean input and type ㅇ, ㅕ, ㅇ. A Korean input method combines these jamo—Hangul letters used as syllable parts—into 영.
Unicode can also represent the syllable with conjoining jamo, 영, which Hangul-aware software shapes as one block. The visibly separated compatibility-jamo sequence ㅇㅕㅇ is different, so an app may leave it separated.
영 is ordinary Korean text; the phrase around it supplies its tone.
A lone 영 does not necessarily mean “zero.”
Part of the collection
Who writes 영
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What it means when someone sends it to you
5 readingsNo single translation; use the surrounding word or sentence.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
3
Questions people ask
1Why does 영 sometimes become 령?
In standard South Korean spelling, an initial-sound rule changes 령 to 영 at the beginning of some Sino-Korean words; inside a word, 령 can remain, as in 대통령. The change depends on the whole word, so the syllables are not freely interchangeable.
More like this
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How to type or find 영
- Also called
- yeong
- Search it as
- yeong meaning · Korean zero 영 · 영 zero meaning · 영 spirit meaning · 영 English word · 영 vs 공
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
영\C601Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.