Tangut character 17DD8

It is a Tangut verb glossed “to drive.” “Tangut Ideograph-17DD8” is a Unicode label, not a word or pronunciation.

Why was Tangut writing created?

To serve Western Xia’s state and cultural life. Created around 1036 under Western Xia’s first emperor, the script gave Tangut an official written form and helped distinguish the state from Song China. It was used for public records and Buddhist works.

The earliest surviving Tangut document is an official dispatch to a military inspector, dated 1072. Tangut writing also carried translations of Chinese and Tibetan works. After Western Xia fell in 1227, it remained in use under the Yuan and Ming dynasties, becoming obsolete by the end of the Ming. The neighboring Khitan people had created scripts about a century earlier; Tangut followed their example and borrowed visual and structural cues from Chinese writing while remaining a distinct system.