旻

mín
noun #36,249

Meanings

  1. 1 the heavens, the sky
  2. 2 specifically the autumn sky

Examples

HSK 4
Tā gěi érzi qǔmíng jiào Zǐ mín.
He named his son Zimin.
HSK 6
Gǔrén chēng qiūtiān de tiānkōng wéi mín tiān.
The ancients called the autumn sky 'mintian' (the autumn heavens).

Tips

history
In the 《尔雅》 (the earliest Chinese dictionary), each season has its own word for 'sky': 春为苍天 (spring = blue heaven), 夏为昊天 (summer = vast heaven), 秋为旻天 (autumn = compassionate heaven), 冬为上天 (winter = high heaven). 旻 is the autumn-specific term, often glossed as 'merciful' because of harvest abundance.
usage
Outside classical and poetic registers, you'll encounter 旻 mainly in given names, where it carries an elegant, cosmic feel, and in the K-pop world via the Korean given-name reading 'Min'.

Components

semantic
日 rì
sun; day
Top 日, the sun, a pictograph of a disc with a central mark. Here it stands for the bright daytime sky overhead, anchoring 旻 in the celestial family with 旭 (sunrise), 昊 (vast sky), and 晴 (clear weather).
phonetic
文 wén
pattern; writing
Bottom 文, originally a person with patterned chest tattoos, here mainly a phonetic prop: wén shifts to mín through an onset change. A faint cultural overtone too, since the autumn sky in classical poetry is the most 'patterned' of the four seasons' heavens, streaked with cloud and migrating birds.

No stroke data for 旻; the glyph shown is your device font, so component strokes can't be highlighted.

Stroke Order

旻 mín