晖 (huī): sunshine

Meanings

1 sunshine
2 sunlight
3 radiance

Characters

晖

huī

sunshine / radiance

Examples

HSK 6

春晖寸草，难报母恩。

Chūn huī cùn cǎo, nán bào mǔ ēn.

Spring sunshine on tiny grass - a child can never fully repay a mother's love.

HSK 7-9

夕晖洒在江面上。

Xī huī sǎ zài jiāng miànshàng.

The evening sunlight spilled across the river.

Tips

register

Literary. Most common in fixed compounds like 春晖 (spring sunshine, often a metaphor for maternal love), 朝晖 (morning glow) and 余晖 (afterglow). Rarely used standalone in conversation.

memory

晖 = 日 (sun) + 军 (jūn, phonetic). Think of the sun's rays mustering like an army across the sky.

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Left-side sun radical - pictograph of the sun, originally circular with a central dot, regularised into a small rectangle with a horizontal line inside. The indexing radical, naturally so: 晖 is sunlight, sunshine, the slanted golden light of dawn or dusk (春晖 spring sunshine, 余晖 afterglow). Same sun/light family: 明 bright, 晨 morning, 晚 evening, 暖 warm, 暴 sudden-violent.

phonetic

军 jūn

army

Right side 军 - simplified from 軍, originally a chariot 车 under a tent-cover 冖. Supplies the sound by old phonetic shift: jūn to huī, an attested k/h alternation. Same phonetic family: 辉 brilliance (synonymous with 晖), 挥 to wave, 浑 muddy. The phonetic faintly reinforces meaning - sunlight as marching radiance.