昭 (zhāo): bright

Meanings

1 bright
2 clear
3 manifest
4 to show clearly (literary)

Characters

昭

zhāo

bright / clear / evident

Examples

真相已昭然若揭。

Zhēnxiàng yǐ zhāoránruòjiē.

The truth is now perfectly clear for all to see.

昭君出塞是中国历史上著名的故事。

Zhāo jūn chū sài shì Zhōngguó lìshǐ shàng zhùmíng de gùshi.

Wang Zhaojun's journey to the frontier is a famous story in Chinese history.

Tips

register

昭 is a classical character. In modern Chinese it appears mainly in fixed phrases: 昭然若揭 (obvious for all to see), 昭示 (to make clear / to manifest), and in personal or place names such as 昭君 and 昭通.

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Left sun radical — pictograph of the sun with a stroke at the centre. Indexes 昭 in the brightness family with 明 bright, 旺 flourishing, 晴 clear-skied. 昭 means 'bright, clear, manifest,' so the sun radical names the source of the illumination — what is plain as day.

phonetic

召 zhào

to summon; to call

Right side 召 supplies the sound zhào exactly. 召 itself pictures a hand-above-mouth giving the imperial call to attendance — and 昭 inherits a faint sense of 'making something officially known.' Same phonetic in 招 to beckon, 照 to shine on, 沼 pond, 诏 imperial edict — a tight family.