晔 (yè): bright

Meanings

1 bright
2 radiant
3 sparkling

Characters

晔

yè

bright / radiant

Examples

HSK 3

灯火晔晔，照亮了整条街。

Dēnghuǒ yè yè, zhàoliàng le zhěng tiáo jiē.

The lights blazed brilliantly, lighting up the whole street.

HSK 4

他给儿子取名叫晔，希望他前途光明。

Tā gěi érzi qǔmíng jiào Yè, xīwàng tā qiántú guāngmíng.

He named his son Ye, hoping his future would be bright.

Tips

register

Almost never appears in everyday speech. You'll mostly meet 晔 as an element in given names - parents pick it for the auspicious 'radiant' meaning. The historian Fan Ye 范晔 (398-445) compiled 《后汉书》 (Book of the Later Han).

memory

日 (sun) on the left + 华 (splendid) on the right → 'splendor of the sun' = bright.

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Left-side sun radical - a square enclosing a stroke, depicting the sun with its inner mark. Indexes 晔 in the light family alongside 明 bright, 晴 clear, 暖 warm. Carries the meaning directly: bright radiance, the dazzling shine of the noon sun.

phonetic

华 huá

splendour; flowering (here phonetic + semantic)

Right side 华 supplies the sound: huá drifted to yè via an older reading preserved in this character. 华 also adds semantic flavour - splendour, blossoming brilliance - overlapping with sunlight imagery. Together the two pieces give 'flowering radiance', the literary register meaning luminous, glorious.