What ⽠ means
It labels the melon radical in a dictionary index. In the Eastern Han Shuowen Jiezi (100–121 CE), 瓜 is described as a pictograph—a character shaped from a drawing—and related forms are grouped under it.
The eighteenth-century Kangxi Dictionary used 214 radicals to sort characters by radical, then remaining strokes. ⽠ is the catalog form; 瓜 is the ordinary ideograph for melon. A radical assignment marks an index position, not necessarily a character’s meaning.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ⽠ 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.
How to type ⽠
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2F60, then Alt+X to get ⽠.
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 “kangxi radical melon”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2f60, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⽠CSS
\2F60Unicode input
In a Unicode-aware code-point picker, enter 2F60. Typing 瓜 produces the ordinary ideograph.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⽠
HTML hex
⽠
CSS content
content: "\2F60";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%BD%A0
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.