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⿶

ideographic description character surround from below

Ideographic description character: surround from below

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⿶ means that one part of a Chinese character surrounds another on the left, bottom and right, leaving the top open. It is used in an ideographic description sequence (IDS): a string of symbols describing how a character’s parts fit together. It describes the arrangement, not the character’s meaning or pronunciation.

Text symbol

What ⿶ means

Read the enclosing part first, then the part inside. The symbol comes before both parts. In ⿶凵㐅, 凵 forms the enclosure and 㐅 sits inside it; together they describe the structure of 凶.

These descriptions help you discuss or record a character by its components, including when the complete character is unavailable as a text character. The enclosure comes from the component following ⿶: ⿶ itself is an instruction, not a stroke added to the finished character.

Technical notation for character structure, rather than a conversational symbol.

Part of the collection

⼈
Chinese Radicals & Strokes
Explore 376 more →

Don't confuse it with

1
⿵
Ideographic Description Character Surround From Above
Encloses from above, leaving the bottom open. ⿶ encloses from below, leaving the top open.

Worth knowing

  • A related notation documented in Taiwan in 1989 described Chinese characters missing from Big5, an encoding used to represent text on computers.

Questions people ask

2

Why do I see separate symbols instead of one character?

That is a valid display. An IDS is a description, not an instruction that every app must turn into one glyph. Software can show its separate symbols; specialized software may draw the described character.

Is ⿶凵㐅 the same text as 凶?

No. It describes 凶, but the description and the single character are different text strings. Searching for one need not find the other. Use 凶 when you want to write the character itself.

How to type or find ⿶

Search it as
⿶ meaning · IDS · character structure
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
⎇Alt+XType 2FF6, then AltX to get ⿶.
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 “ideographic description character surround from below”.
Linux
⎈Ctrl+⇧Shift+UType 2ff6, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⿶
CSS
\2FF6
Why 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
HTML decimal
⿶
HTML hex
⿶
CSS content
content: "\2FF6";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%BF%B6
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.

Families this belongs to

2

Chinese characters99,354 symbols

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Chinese, Japanese & Korean121,370 symbols

ᄀᄁᄂᄃᄄᄅᄆᄇᄈᄉᄊᄋ