Meaning & readings
sunshine, yang principle, positive, male, heaven, daytime
Origin
The character 陽 combines the radical for earth or land (the left component) with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The right part originally depicted the sun, which over time became a phonetic hint rather than adding meaning. Since the sun shines on the earth and represents brightness and warmth, the character came to mean sunshine and the positive, heavenly aspects of the natural world. The "yang" principle in Chinese philosophy similarly represents light, heat, and masculine energy—all qualities associated with sunlight touching the earth.
Components
- ⻖
- 昜
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 170
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1071 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0967D