Tangut Component 757

Enter U+18AF4 with a Unicode input command. For Tangut Unicode input, enter 18AF4 or U+18AF4, as your editor expects; in HTML, use 𘫴.

What does 𘫴 mean?

It is a Tangut building block used to describe larger characters. Tangut is a script once used to write the Tangut language. Its components help dictionaries group entries and let an Ideographic Description Sequence (IDS)—a structural recipe—show how a larger character is built. 𘫴 is notation, not a word with a standalone translation.

Tangut script was created under Western Xia’s first emperor around 1036; Western Xia was a medieval kingdom. Tangut writing served government, private, and religious texts, continued after the kingdom fell, and later fell out of use.

Why was 𘫴 encoded?

It preserves one entry in a modern scholarly component system. Tangut dictionaries do not share one standard component list. Unicode brings together forms used in Chinese-, Japanese-, Russian-, and English-language dictionaries and publications, plus extra pieces for describing characters. Some components head dictionary groups, often called radicals; others form part of an IDS.

In 2014, an encoding proposal matched U+18AF4 to an entry in Essential Selection of Often-Transmitted Homonyms and Mixed Characters, a Tangut reference work printed from carved wooden blocks. The entry lists components by position or type and gives example characters. The proposal documents a source for the component, not when its shape first appeared.