Tangut Ideograph-17248

No single English gloss is secure. 𗉈 is a character in the Tangut script, which wrote a Tibeto-Burman language used in the Western Xia state. The script was established around 1036 for that state and appeared in official, private, and religious texts. It continued through the Yuan and Ming dynasties, then became obsolete by the end of the Ming.

Tangut belonged to a wider Chinese-influenced North Asian writing world that also included the Khitan and Jurchen scripts. That is a historical connection; it does not make this character Chinese or give it a Chinese reading.

Why can 𗉈 mean both “cool” and “scorching”?

Two dictionary entries may have been unified under one encoded character. A 2008 Unicode discussion suggested that this character might combine two entries in a Tangut dictionary by Li Fanwen: entry 735, glossed “cool,” and entry 1521, glossed “scorching.” The entries also show different parts on the right side of the character. The discussion leaves open whether the reading or a dictionary definition was at fault.

For a standalone character, neither gloss is dependable. In a quotation, check the cited dictionary entry and surrounding text; if those are missing, leave the reading unresolved instead of choosing between “cool” and “scorching.”

Why does 𗉈 sometimes show as a box?

The display may lack a font, not the character. A Tangut font contains Tangut characters. Without a Tangut-capable font, a browser or app may show a missing-glyph box; fonts can also draw the same encoded character differently. Those display differences do not change which character the text contains.

A box signals a rendering problem. The surrounding source or its description is needed to establish the intended meaning.