What ᵕ means
It marks an over-short vowel in UPA. The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a system for writing pronunciation. It uses ᴗ for an open back rounded vowel: the tongue is low and toward the back of the mouth while the lips are rounded. Raising ᴗ to ᵕ marks an over-short version; related UPA traditions may use the surrounding notation to pin down its exact sound.
In 1901, linguist Setälä noted that Techmer had already used shortened forms of the rounded-vowel signs ᴗ and ᴖ. Setälä used raised letters to mark sounds shorter than ordinary short vowels.
Can ᵕ mean a smile?
It can serve as a curved mouth in a kaomoji. Kaomoji guides documented this use as of 2026-09-06. In (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶), ᵕ sits between two ᵔ marks as the mouth, giving the face a gentle, content expression. The neighboring marks shape that expression, so read the whole face.
Specialist in UPA phonetic text; a curved mouth in kaomoji, documented as of 2026-09-06.
Don't read a whole smile from ᵕ alone; check the rest of the face.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsDon't confuse it with
2Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does ᵕ 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 ᵕ
ᵕ\1D55Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.