At first this appeared a simple question; Unicode defines the symbol as "equal to or less-than", which would appear to be the same as "less-than or equal to". But on investigating a bit, I found very few uses or definitions of this symbol in online mathematical literature. Google Books (see link) turns up a variety of use cases in such diverse fields as automotive chassis, logic, public economics, quantum electronics, and theoretical computer science - but virtually every use appears to be accompanied by its own, inconsistent definition of the meaning. General web searches turn up almost nothing relevant. People have suggested this is an archaic synonym for $\leq$ that's fallen out of use, but I've found no evidence to support that. Still, it found its way into LaTeX AMSmath and Unicode somehow and presumably has some documented history somewhere.
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$\begingroup$ I like this question, but it's not in the scope of this forum. I think maybe there's a latex SE. $\endgroup$– Pat DevlinCommented Jan 10, 2017 at 13:48
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5$\begingroup$ I think the question is on-topic if we interpret it as "does this symbol have a standard meaning in mathematics" (excluding all the other domains mentioned, and not limiting ourselves to "binary numerical relationship"(?). That being said, I think the answer is emphatically "no", which doesn't make it very interesting. Many mathematical symbols simply mean whatever the author defines them to mean, and anyone using ⪕ should define it before using it. $\endgroup$– Gro-TsenCommented Jan 10, 2017 at 14:58
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$\begingroup$ Asking the question on a LaTeX site isn't helpful; all that's going to turn up is that the macro turns into the symbol. Is there a less research-level math overflow-style site this question would be more appropriate for? Ah, OK, trying math.stackexchange.com then. $\endgroup$– JonCommented Jan 11, 2017 at 0:05
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