Taxonomy of meanings for 冥:　　

Additional information about 冥

說文解字: 【冥】，幽也。从日、从六，冖聲。 〔小徐本「六」上無「从」。〕 日數十，十六日而月始虧幽也。 〔小徐本「月」下有「數」。〕 凡冥之屬皆从冥。 【莫經切】

Criteria
• BRIGHT
  

  1. The general term for what appears luminous or bright in the broadest sense of these terms is míng 明 (ant. àn 暗 "dark" and yǐn 隱 "dark"), a word heavily laden with religious overtones.

  2. Liàng 亮 "bright" (ant. yōu 幽 "dark and shady"), càn 燦 and làn 爛 are primarily optical and rather prosaic terms to use.

  3. Zhāo 昭 "resplendent" (ant. míng 冥 "dark"), gěng 耿 "brilliant", hào 皓 "shining bright", yè 燁, and hè 赫 "luminous" is a highly charged ritually high-flown word that belongs to court language, often with metaphorical force.

  4. Yáng 陽 "bright" (ant. yīn 陰 "dark") is simply the opposite of dark and does not connote any high degree of luminosity.

  5. Lǎng 朗 is an elevated word used to refer to things resplendent and bright.

  6. Hào 顥 and qíng 晴 "bright" refers to the brightness of the sky.

  7. Yàn 宴／曣 refers specifically to the brightness of the sky.

  8. Guāng 光 refers generally to light or even resplendence. See LIGHT

  For causative uses see ILLUMINATE.

  For figurative uses see ILLUSTRIOUS

• SEA
  

  1. The dominant word for the sea is hǎi 海.

  2. Míng 冥 / 溟 are probably wrongly interpreted as referring to the sea, but since this misapprehension has become fairly common the meaning "sea" must be registered for the word in later times.

  3. Xiè 澥 is a rare word referring to a gulf.

  NB: Yáng 洋 refers to the vast ocean, but the word first became current in Song times.

• DARK
  

  1. The most current general word for physical shadowiness and obscurity is probably yōu 幽 (ant. míng 明 "bright"), but this word often has lyrical overtones of secluded peace.

  2. Míng 冥 (ant. guāng 光 "light"), hūn 昏 (ant. zhāo 昭 "bright") and the rarer mèi 昧 (ant. xiǎn 顯 "clear and manifest") refer freely to purely optical darkness and abstract obscurity.

  3. Xuán 玄 "very dark reddish-black" (ant. bái 白 "plain white") currently refers to mysterious obscurity of the abstract kind. See MYSTERIOUS

  4. Huì 晦 (ant. zhāng 彰 "plain and manifest") refers to obscurity, expecially of texts or of thoughts.

  5. Měng 蒙 (ant. yào 耀 "bright and clearly visible") refers to psychological dimness, obfuscation of mind.

  6. Yǐn 隱 focuses on the inaccessibility to discursive reasoning of what is mysterious.

  7. Àn 暗 / 闇 (ant. míng 明 "bright") can refer to darkness but most of the time this word actually refers abstractly to the benightedness of a ruler.

  8. Yīn 陰 "shadowy, shaded" (ant.* liàng 亮 "bright") describes the lack of light as contrasted with surrounding light.

  9. Ài 曖 is pervasive darkness as a general state, where mèi 昧 is darker than ài 曖.

  10. Hēi 黑 (ant.* hào 皓 "shiny and bright") is darkness imposed by the intrinsic darkness of pigment on an object. See BLACK.

  11. Yǎo 杳 is used in poetry as a general word referring to darkness.

  12. Wū 烏 (ant. hào 皓 "shining white") is quite rare and refers to a high degree of darkness that is without lustre not quite pitch dark.

• NIGHT
  

  1. Yè 夜 (ant. zhòu 晝 "daytime", and rì 日 "day (when it is bright)") is the general term referring to the part of the day when it is dark, i.e. the evening and the night.

  2. Xiāo 宵 (ant. zhòu 晝 ) refers to the night only, without including the evening, and the reference is not to the length of time so much as to the absence of sunlight.

  3. Yè fēn 夜分 (ant. rì zhōng 日中 "midday") refers to midnight.

  4. Sù 宿 refers to a night as what is spent in a hostel, or as the time one uses for sleep.

  5. Míng 冥 is occasionally used to refer, by synecdoche, to the night as the time when it is dark.

• MORNING
  

  1. The current general word for the morning is zhāo 朝 (ant. xì 夕 "evening") 。

  2. Sù 夙 (ant. yè 夜 "night") refers generically to the early morning and is almost still a part of the night, yè 夜, since it is a time where the moon is still out. It never refers specifically to the morning of a given day.

  3. Mèi shuǎng 昧爽 (ant. huáng hūn 黃昏 "dusk, or the time just after dusk") refers specifically to the time of dawn or just before dawn.

  4. Píng míng 平明 refers exactly to the point of daybreak.

  5. Chén 晨 (hūn 昏 "dusk") refers to the period after sunrise but before the late morning, and occasionally the word does also include the time just before sunrise.

  6. Dàn 旦 (ant. xì 夕 "in the evening") refers to the morning right until sunrise, when it is already quite bright and the moon is no longer visible, thus reaching somewhat more into the day than sù 夙 and zǎo 早.

  7. Xiǎo 曉 (ant. xiāo 宵 "evening") is exceedingly rare in pre-Buddhist texts and refers to the part of the morning where the sun is already shining.

  8. Míng 明 (ant. míng 冥 "darkness, the dark" mù 暮 "dusk") refers to the early morning in OBI.

  9. Zǎo 早 (ant. wǎn 晚 "late") is often used to refer in a somewhat diffuse way to the very early morning as the time preceding ordinary activities.

  DK: See Tunnan 42 for an important inscription on times of day. CH: SHIJI 55, beginning, has a nice sequence on timewords referring to parts of the day.

Word relations
• Assoc: (DARK)幽/DARK The most current general word for physical shadowiness and obscurity is probably yōu 幽 (ant. míng 明 "bright"), but this word often has lyrical overtones of secluded peace. 3 Attributions
• Assoc: (DARK)晦/DARK Huì 晦 (ant. zhāng 彰 "plain and manifest") refers to obscurity, expecially of texts or of thoughts.