What ⾻ means
No: 骨 is the ordinary ideograph; ⾻ is the radical symbol.
Unicode links ⾻ to 骨 but keeps their roles separate: ⾻ marks an index category, while 骨 is used as a word or word part. A radical-stroke dictionary groups entries by the character component used as their label, then sorts them by remaining strokes.
Forms of 骨 appear in oracle-bone inscriptions from the 14th–11th centuries BCE, texts carved for royal divination. Later forms appear on bamboo slips (thin strips used for writing) from Chu and Qin, early Chinese states, and in seal script (a formal inscription style) and clerical script (an administrative style). Shuowen Jiezi, an early Chinese character dictionary, describes 骨 as bone within flesh. In 1615, Zihui reorganized Shuowen Jiezi’s 540-section scheme into 214 dictionary radicals; the Kangxi Dictionary adopted that index in 1716.
⾻ reads as dictionary-index notation, suited to a catalog or character-reference context.
For the ordinary word “bone,” use 骨.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ⾻ 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.
More like this
11
How to type or find ⾻
- Search it as
- bone radical · Kangxi bone radical · bone radical symbol · ⾻ vs 骨 · U+2FBB · 2FBB · 骨部 · 部首
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⾻\2FBBCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.