昏 (hūn): dizzy; muddled; confused

Meanings

1 dizzy; muddled; confused
2 to faint; to lose consciousness
3 dusk; twilight; dim

Characters

昏

hūn

dusk; dim; confused; faint

日 (sun) sinking below 氏 — dusk, dimness.

Examples

他头昏眼花。

Tā tóuhūn yǎnhuā.

He's dizzy and seeing stars.

天色已经昏暗了。

Tiānsè yǐjīng hūn'àn le.

The sky has already grown dim.

她激动得差点昏过去。

Tā jīdòng de chàdiǎn hūnguòqù.

She was so excited she nearly fainted.

老人昏昏沉沉地睡着了。

Lǎorén hūnhūnchénchén de shuìzháo le.

The old man fell into a drowsy sleep.

Tips

usage

昏 appears in many compounds: 昏迷 (coma), 昏暗 (dim/gloomy), 昏倒 (to faint), 黄昏 (dusk). The character combines 日 (sun) and 氏 — the sun going down, growing dim.

memory

The sun (日) at the bottom is sinking — things grow dim, your vision blurs, you feel dizzy.

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Bottom 日 (sun) — the indexing radical. The position is critical: with 氐 above and 日 below, the picture is the sun ducking beneath the horizon — twilight, dusk. From the literal sense came the metaphorical 'dim, faint, dazed, unconscious': 头昏 (dizzy), 昏迷 (in a coma), 黄昏 (twilight).

semantic

氏 shì

clan; surname (here graphic)

Top 氐/氏 — historically the graph 氐 (dǐ, 'low, base') with the bottom dot dropped: a stylised picture of something descending. Compound ideograph: the sun (below) is sinking down to the horizon. Anchors the original meaning 'dusk, when the sun goes low.'