What ḍ means
It marks a language-specific consonant in transliteration.
In an Arabic table, ḍ is the Latin counterpart of ḍād (ض). In IAST, the same glyph names Devanagari ड, a voiced retroflex stop. The dot is a system marker, not a universal pronunciation instruction.
As of 2026, no defensible single first attestation for this exact Latin glyph is established in the sources checked. Its documented purpose is practical: preserving distinctions from a non-Latin source when Latin letters are used, especially in scholarship, catalogs, and language learning. For production, Windows Word accepts 1E0D followed by AltX.
Why is the dot below important?
It preserves distinctions that plain d can erase.
Arabic romanization keeps ḍ beside ṣ, ṭ, and ẓ as separate marked consonants. IAST keeps it beside ṭ, ṇ, and ḍh in the retroflex series. These are relationships inside each transcription system, not a universal meaning attached to the dot.
If a message gives no source language, treat ḍ as a clue about the writer's transcription system. Do not infer a pronunciation from the mark alone.
It signals formal transliteration: scholarship, catalogs, language study, or careful preservation of source-script distinctions.
Do not replace it with plain d when the source system distinguishes them.
Drift: Phone use expanded Latin-script Arabic beyond specialist scholarship since the 1990s, but informal systems remain non-uniform; ḍ is a formal transliteration spelling, not a universal chat spelling.
Part of the collection
Who writes ḍ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsIt maps the Arabic letter ḍād (ض) in formal transliteration; the dot marks that source-letter distinction.
Don't confuse it with
4
ḍ A combining sequence built from d plus a dot below; it can render differently even when text is canonically equivalent.
ḍh In IAST, the extra h marks the aspirated counterpart; it is not a spelling variant of ḍ.
Related characters
3
Questions people ask
1Why is my ḍ dot misplaced?
Usually, it is a font-support problem. A combining dot can be offset or detached when the layout engine lacks that base-plus-mark combination; use the precomposed ḍ when possible.
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ḌLatin Capital Letter D With Dot Below
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̣Combining Dot Below
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ḋLatin Small Letter D With Dot Above
ḎLatin Capital Letter D With Line Below
ALatin Capital Letter A
BLatin Capital Letter B
CLatin Capital Letter C
DLatin Capital Letter D
ELatin Capital Letter ECollections with ḍ
1
How to type or find ḍ
- Search it as
- ḍ · ḍ · d-underdot · d-under-dot · d-dot-below · d-subdot · retroflex-d · ḍād
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ḍ\1E0DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.