晕 (yùn): halo (ring of light around the…

Meanings

1 halo (ring of light around the sun or moon)
2 to be motion-sick (in a vehicle, boat, plane, etc.)
3 vertigo; spinning sensation

Characters

晕

yùn

halo (ring of light around the sun or moon)

Examples

我一坐车就晕。

Wǒ yī zuòchē jiù yùn.

I get carsick the moment I'm in a car.

今晚月亮周围有一圈月晕。

Jīnwǎn yuèliang zhōuwéi yǒu yī quān yuèyùn.

There's a halo around the moon tonight.

他最近一直眩晕。

Tā zuìjìn yīzhí xuànyùn.

He's been suffering from vertigo recently.

Tips

usage

Two clusters take yùn (falling tone). MOTION-SICKNESS verbs: 晕车 (carsick), 晕船 (seasick), 晕机 (airsick). HALO/VERTIGO nouns: 月晕 (moon halo), 日晕 (sun halo), 眩晕 (vertigo), 电晕 (corona discharge). Mnemonic: yūn is the dizzy you do; yùn is the dizzy thing you have or see.

mistakes

Standalone 晕 in casual speech ('I'm dizzy') stays first-tone — only the specific compounds about motion sickness, optical halos, and clinical vertigo flip to yùn. A surprise carsickness sentence like 我有点晕 will usually be heard as yūn unless explicitly framed as motion sickness.

Components

radical

日 rì

sun; day

Top sun radical (Kangxi #72) — the indexing radical. The original sense of 晕 was a 'halo around the sun or moon' — that hazy ring you see in misty conditions. From 'optical halo' came 'dizzy, faint, see stars,' the modern colloquial senses (晕车 carsick, 我晕了 I'm dizzy/whoa). Same radical groups 时, 明, 早, 晚.

phonetic

军 jūn

army; military

Bottom phonetic 军 — supplies the sound, shifting to yūn/yùn through the velar-to-zero shift typical of medieval Mandarin. Same phonetic in 运 (transport), 浑 (muddy), 挥 (wave), 辉 (shine). Recognising 军 below or beside often signals a yūn/yùn/huī reading.