Tangut character 𗮢

A Tangut dictionary glosses 𗮢 as “ringworm.”

Ringworm is a fungal skin infection, not a literal worm. One scholarly reconstruction writes its Tangut reading as lhon; that is pronunciation notation, not the English gloss.

Tangut, also called Xixia, was a script for the Tangut language in the Western Xia state, in what is now northwestern China. It was created around 1036 under the state’s first emperor and appeared in official, private, and religious writing, including Buddhist books and sutras.

Is 𗮢 Chinese?

No. It is Tangut writing, not a Han Chinese character or emoji.

Its square forms can look Chinese, but Tangut is a separate script; resemblance alone does not make 𗮢 readable as Chinese text.

After Western Xia fell to the Mongols, Tangut writing continued under the Yuan and Ming dynasties; it was obsolete by the end of the Ming dynasty. The script was rediscovered in the late 19th century and largely deciphered through scholar Nikolai Nevskij’s work in the early 20th century.

How do I type 𗮢 without a Tangut keyboard?

In an editor with Unicode hex input, enter U+17BA2.

Unicode hex input lets you enter a character by its code value. A character map that searches by code point is another option. Specialist Tangut input methods may search by strokes or reconstructed readings, depending on the software.