Chinese Character Wiki
冥

míng

dark

Original meaning: 

to give birth to a child

Depicts two hands (𠬜) opening a woman's legs with a baby's head protruding out of it. Based on the original meaning "to give birth to a child", now written as 娩. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
◎ iconic component

◎  Iconic component

  

characterless component

Depicts the legs of a woman.

◎ iconic component

◎  Iconic component

  

characterless component

Depicts a baby's head.

𠬜 iconic component

𠬜  Iconic component

pān

  

to climb

Depicts two hands facing away from each other. Modern form looks like 六.

Evolution

冥 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
冥 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
冥 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

冥  

míng

dark, gloomy, night; deep; dark; stupid; the underworld

冥 (㝠) 

míng

old variant of 冥[míng]

Most common words with 冥
Freq.
Word
Meaning

冥

dark

冥王星

Pluto (dwarf planet)

冥想

to meditate

冥冥之中

in the unseen world of spirits

幽冥

dark

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (0 verified)

瞑 溟

Sound component in 4 characters (0 verified)

瞑 螟 暝 蓂

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*mˤeŋ

meng

míng

dark


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 3.4599% of movies

2407th most common character in movies

2739th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

10

Unicode

U+51A5

Shuowen

“冥，幽也。从日，从六，冖聲。日數十，十六日而月始虧，幽也。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License