What ⊰ means
One item comes before another under a given relation. It is built on the precedes sign , which mathematicians use for “comes before” in orderings that are not about size, such as steps in a process or elements of a partially ordered set. The “under relation” part says the order is the one defined by a relation named in the surrounding text.
It reached Unicode from the standard character lists for publishing mathematics, where its name is prurel. In real papers it is rare; does most of the work.
Why do people put ⊰ around names?
Pure decoration: the pair looks like ornate brackets. In nicknames, profile bios, game names and headings, ⊰ and frame text the way « » or 【 】 might. There is no hidden meaning. Two practical notes: a font without the symbol shows an empty box, and screen readers may read out its full maths name.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
2Does ⊰ mean “less than”?
No. Less-than is <. ⊰ belongs to the precedes family, an ordering not tied to size, and in decorative text it means nothing at all.
Why do I see a box instead of ⊰?
Your font lacks it. Most system symbol fonts include it, but some phones or apps fall back to an empty box.
More like this
9
Collections with ⊰
3
How to type or find ⊰
- Also called
- prurel · curly bracket decoration
- Search it as
- ⊰ · ⊰ ⊱ · fancy bracket · name decoration · precedes symbol · maths relation symbol
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⊰\22B0\prurel in math mode with the unicode-math package and an OpenType math font (XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX).⊰ or ⊰.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.