What ꇵ means
It is a Yi syllable, not a complete word on its own.
In the standardized Liangshan Yi script, ꇵ is read as one syllable; Yi Pinyin writes that reading as gup. Yi Pinyin is a roman-letter system for spelling Yi syllables. It tells you how to read this character, not what English word it translates to: the surrounding Yi text supplies the meaning.
Accounts of early Yi writing describe inscriptions on stone, bronze, pottery, and bone; surviving paper texts date to around 1500. Bimo, Yi ritual specialists, copied traditional forms for religious, magical, medical, and genealogical texts. The standardized Liangshan script was developed in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to support literacy in one Yi variety, not to unify all Yi varieties. It drew on older Yi ideographs. Cuan and Wei are historical labels for Yi writing traditions, not names or readings of ꇵ. The standard runs left to right; older traditions also used other directions.
How do I type ꇵ?
Enter gup in a Yi Pinyin input method, then select ꇵ.
A Yi input method accepts romanized Yi Pinyin and displays matching Yi characters as candidates. Select ꇵ from the list; gup is the lookup spelling, not the finished Yi character.
The displayed outline comes from your font. A box or replacement mark means that font lacks Yi coverage; choose one that supports Yi syllables.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ꇵ show as a box on my screen?
Your font lacks Yi coverage. Choose a font that supports Yi syllables; the character is still ꇵ.
How to type ꇵ
ꇵ\A1F5Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.