What ⿴ means
Read it as “put the second part inside the first.” For example, ⿴囗口 describes 回: the outer enclosure 囗 surrounds the inner 口. The two square-shaped components are different characters. ⿴ tells you their arrangement, not their pronunciation or meaning.
Han characters are used in Chinese writing, as Japanese kanji and as Korean hanja. Many contain smaller components arranged beside, above or inside one another. Description sequences express that structure in text, including for characters unavailable in a computer's character set.
⿴ is a separate text character, not a combining mark. Unicode allows a description to remain a visible sequence; software can also interpret it to draw the described character. Typing ⿴囗口 therefore need not display 回, and the sequence is not interchangeable with 回 in ordinary text searches.
Technical notation for the structure of Han characters.
⿴ alone is an operator, not a complete description: it needs two components.
Part of the collection
Related characters
3
Questions people ask
1Why does ⿴ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Ideographic Description Characters block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
More like this
10
⿵Ideographic Description Character Surround From Above
⿶Ideographic Description Character Surround From Below
⿷Ideographic Description Character Surround From Left
⿲Ideographic Description Character Left To Middle And Right
⿳Ideographic Description Character Above To Middle And Below
ᄀHangul Choseong Kiyeok
ᄁHangul Choseong Ssangkiyeok
ᄂHangul Choseong Nieun
ᄃHangul Choseong Tikeut
ᄄHangul Choseong SsangtikeutHow to type or find ⿴
- Search it as
- ideographic description · IDS · IDC · Han character structure
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⿴\2FF4Why is ⿴ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.