Ideographic description character overlaid

Read it as “overlap the two parts that follow.” ⿻ comes before both parts, rather than between them. Each part can be a character component or a smaller description of its own.

In ⿻工从, the parts 工 and 从 occupy the same character space to describe the shape of 巫. This tells you how the shapes fit together, not the character’s pronunciation, meaning or historical origin.

Chinese characters, also used as Japanese kanji and Korean hanja, can contain parts arranged beside, above or within one another. IDS notation describes those arrangements in text. It can describe a form even when that form has no separately assigned Unicode character.