dǔn

[tooironic]

My paper dictionary 《现代海域词典》 lists a character resembling 不 as dǔn meaning a block of wood or stone or a brick of clay used to make porcelain (dial.).

However it seems character encoding on computers doesn't seem to allocate a different character for bù and dǔn, and so both come out looking like bù 不. This is despite the fact that dǔn actually looks different in my paper dictionary - the two horizontal strokes on either side don't go down as far as the character for bù 不.

Anyone else noticed this? I guess whoever did the encoding originally thought they were the same character.

[roddy]

Ah, good old U+233B4. This is one of the characters so obscure that if you try and use it in a post the database spits the dummy and truncates your post. Try it if you want

They come up different in Word for me, but you'd be forgiven for missing the difference I think.

[tooironic]

Interesting. The character in my paper dictionary is different to both of them. It has much shorter 'wings'.

I suppose dǔn is pretty obscure. Even zhongwen.com's character "genealogy" doesn't list it. Still, it does come up in my Google pinyin input, as well as in my 步步高.

EDIT: I'd love to see if one of the wubi enthusiasts can input it.

[roddy]

It's extremely obscure - you can see on the Unihan page that it's not listed in any of the Chinese standards - which I guess means it was assumed that for all practical purposes, nobody would need it.

[889]

Wenlin has a useful explanation:

"From 木 (mù) 'tree', with the top cut off. Not the same as 不 bù.

This is an ancient character, included in 说文, under radical 木.

Probably related to 墩 dūn as in 墩子 'block of wood/stone'.

This character was added to Unicode 3.1."

[tooironic]

Ah yes I was about to check Wenlin. Cheers.

[imron]

I just tried it using a number of different Wubi IMEs on both Windows and Mac. None of them could type the dun character. A quick search online showed that the character code for it is GII, which is the same for 不, however typing that only shows 不 and not any other character.

Interestingly enough, when testing dun on a variety of pinyin IMEs on Windows and Mac, the character that is both shown in the selection box and in output is 不 and not the dun character, so Wubi is no worse off than pinyin for inputting this char as with both styles you end up resorting to 不.

[Lu]

It doesn't say much that it's not in the zhongwen.com geneology, zhongwen.com is a very useful dictionary but it's far from complete.

[isela]

Hm... I've never heard of this character all my life... You guys are deeply in our territory now!

In fact, at first when I saw this, I was thinking of the slang word for "buying/procuring in bulk" (as verb). I believe this is commonly used in Northern China, but am not sure if it has an actual character associated with it.

[xiaojiang216]

Here's some information about dǔn.

[Lugubert]

I cant' get Plecodict to produce it from my handwriting, but entering Pinyin dunzi works to yield "1. block of wood/stone 2. brick of porcelain clay."

The Mojikyo fonts have a character which, copied, emerges OK in MS Word, but here displays 背.

[Hofmann]

Arrgh!，【唐韻】五葛切【集韻】【韻會】牙葛切，竝岸入聲古文Arrrgh!。从木無頭。【玉篇】Arrrgh!、Arrgh!、Arrrrgh!、枿竝同櫱。【吳棫·韻補】Arrgh!，木餘也。　又【集韻】牛代切，音礙。木曲頭不出也。