阳 | yáng

In Mandarin Chinese, 阳 (Pinyin: yáng 🔊) is an adjective meaning “open”, “overt”, “protruding”, “positive” or a noun for “the sun”, “light” and, would you believe it, “male genitals”. All these meanings are related to Yang, “a principle in Chinese and related East Asian philosophies associated with bright, hot, masculine, etc. elements of the natural world”. According to Wikipedia,

Yang, by contrast <with Yin>, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and active; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime.

阳 is a simplified form of the traditional character 陽, which is a combination of radicals 阝 (a simplification of 阜, “hill” or “mound”) and 昜 (“sunshine”, which has the same pronunciation as the whole 陽), thus translated as “sunny side of a hill”. The 昜 got simplified to one aspect of Yang, 日 “the sun”.

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阴 | yīn

In Mandarin Chinese, 阴 (Pinyin: yīn 🔊) is an adjective meaning “cloudy”, “overcast”, “dark”, “hidden”, “secret”, “insidious”, “negative” etc., or a noun for “the moon”, “shade”, “shadow” or “back”. All these meanings are related to Yin, “a principle in Chinese and related East Asian philosophies associated with dark, cool, female, etc. elements of the natural world”. According to Wikipedia,

Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, and passive; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity, and nighttime.

阴 is also a word for human “private parts”, that is, anus and (both female and male) genitals — maybe because they are supposed to be hidden?

阴 is a simplified form of the traditional character 陰, which is a combination of radicals 阝 (itself a simplification of 阜, “hill” or “mound”) and 侌 (which has the same meaning as the whole 陰), thus translated as “dark side of a hill”. The 侌 got simplified to one aspect of Yin, 月 “the moon”.

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亥 | hài

In Mandarin Chinese, 亥 (Pinyin: hài 🔊) is the twelfth of twelve earthly branches. It corresponds to the Year of the Pig (猪) of the Chinese zodiac; the tenth month; the hour of the Pig (9 pm to 11 pm, “the time when Pigs are sleeping sweetly”); and the direction 330° (where 0°/360° is north). Its associated “fixed element” is Water, 水.

Note that the character 猪 refers to an actual pig (i.e. any animal of the genus Sus) while 亥 refers to the zodiac animal.

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猪 | zhū

In Mandarin Chinese, 猪 (Pinyin: zhū 🔊) means “pig”, “hog” or “boar”. It is also used figuratively, that is, as an insult. The Pig is one of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is associated with the earthly branch 亥.

猪 is a simplified form of the traditional character 豬 which is a phono-semantic compound of semantic 豕 (“pig”, “boar”) and phonetic 者 (zhě). By some reason, in the simplified form, the semantic component mutated from 豕 (“pig”) to 犭 (“dog”). 猪肉 / 豬肉 (zhūròu 🔊) means “pork”.

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鼠 | shǔ

In Mandarin Chinese, 鼠 (Pinyin: shǔ 🔊) is a word for “mouse”, “rat” or other similar rodent.

The Rat is the first of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is associated with the earthly branch 子.

An ancient folk story tells that Cat and Rat were the worst swimmers in the animal kingdom. Although they were poor swimmers, they were both quite intelligent. To get to the meeting called by the Jade Emperor, they had to cross a river to reach the meeting place. The Jade Emperor had also decreed that the years on the calendar would be named for each animal in the order they arrived to the meeting. Cat and Rat decided that the best and fastest way to cross the river was to hop on the back of Ox. Ox, being naïve and good-natured, agreed to carry them both across. Midway across the river, Rat pushed Cat into the water. Then as Ox neared the other side of the river, Rat jumped ahead and reached the shore first, claiming first place in the competition and the zodiac.

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♏ | Scorpio

♏ (Scorpio) is the eighth astrological sign in the Western zodiac. Just like the Cancer and Pisces, it is a water sign. Traditionally ruled by (the real planet) Mars, its modern ruler is (the dwarf planet) Pluto. The Sun is in this sign between 23 October and 22 November.

The symbol ♏ looks very much like that of Virgo, ♍, but its origin is much more obscure. The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that the arrow attached to the “letter m” is related to a scorpion’s stinger. Juan Eduardo Cirlot wrote in his Dictionary of Symbols:

It corresponds to that period of the span of man’s life which lies under the threat of death (that is, the ‘fall’). It is also related with the sexual function. <...> In the symbolism of megaliths it is the antithesis of the bee whose honey succours Man. Finally, its symbolism is equivalent to that of the hangman.

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♓ | Pisces

♓ (Pisces) is the twelfth astrological sign in the Western zodiac, ruled by the planet Neptune. The Sun is in this sign between 19 February and 20 March.

Juan Eduardo Cirlot wrote in his Dictionary of Symbols:

The last sign of the Zodiac, closely bound up with the symbolism of water and of the ‘dissolution of forms’ which takes place in the Akasha. Neptune whipping up the waves with his trident, and calling forth bulls and horses out of them, is a symbolic expression of the resurgence of cosmic energy from the watery deeps of the primordial ocean. If Capricorn marks the beginning of the process of dissolution, Pisces denotes the final moment which, for this very reason, contains within itself the beginning of the new cycle. Related to Pisces are the avatar in the form of the fish of Vishnu in India, and the Chaldean myth of Oannes the man-fish. This twelfth house of the Zodiac, when transposed, by analogy, to the existential and psychic plane, denotes defeat and failure, exile or seclusion, and also mysticism and the denial of the self and its passions. The dual aspect of this symbol is well expressed by the zodiacal sign itself, composed of two fishes arranged parallel to one another but facing in different directions: the left-hand fish indicates the direction of involution or the beginning of a new cycle in the world of manifestation, while the fish that faces the right points to the direction of evolution — the way out of the cycle.

Incidentally, Pisces was the first Latin zodiac name that I learned 40 years ago, thanks to the song by Livin’ Blues.

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♋️ | Cancer

♋️ (Cancer) is the fourth astrological sign in the Western zodiac. The Sun is in this sign between 22 June and 22 July.

According to Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols,

Orphic teaching sees it as the threshold through which the soul enters upon its incarnation. It is governed by the Moon in the performance of its symbolic rôle as mediator between the formal and the informal worlds.

The symbol ♋️ looks like number “69” but most probably is something else. There are several hypotheses of its origin, none of them too convincing.

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♒ | Aquarius

♒ (Aquarius) is the 11^th astrological sign in the Western zodiac, ruled by the planet Uranus. Its ancient ruler was Saturn. The Sun is in this sign between 20 January and 18 February.

Juan Eduardo Cirlot wrote in his Dictionary of Symbols:

Its allegorical representation is a figure of a man pouring water from an amphora. In the Egyptian Zodiac of Denderah, Aquarius carries two amphorae. This version merely affects the numerical symbolism; it affords clearer proof of the dual force of the symbol (its active and passive aspects, evolution and involution), a duality which is of the essence in the important symbol of the Gemini. All Eastern and Western traditions relate this archetype to the symbolic flood which stands not only for the end of a formal universe but also for the completion of any cycle by the destruction of the power which held its components together. When this power ceases to function, the components return to the Akasha — the universal solvent — which is symbolized by Pisces. In these two signs of the Zodiac, then, the cosmic pralaya, or Brahma’s night, runs its course. Its function, according to Hindu tradition, is to reabsorb into Oneness all those elements which originally seceded from it to lead separate individual existences. Thus, each end carries the seed of a new beginning (Ouroboros). The Egyptians identified Aquarius with their god Hapi, the personification of the Nile, whose floods were the source of the agricultural, economic and spiritual life of the country. Consequently, Aquarius symbolizes the dissolution and decomposition of the forms existing within any process, cycle or period; the loosening of bonds; the imminence of liberation through the destruction of the world of phenomena.

Man, that’s deep... and rather scary. And if you’ve read that far, you might as well wonder if “liberation through the destruction” is related at all to “the mind’s true liberation” as sung in Aquarius from Hair.

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μ | mu

The Greek letter μ (mu) arose from the ancient Phoenician letter 𐤌 (mēm) which, in turn, was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph for water, 𓈖.

The lower-case μ has many uses in maths, engineering and sciences, for example:

• in coordination chemistry: μ-, a prefix for a bridging ligand
• in electromagnetism:
  • the magnetic moment and the units to express it, such as the Bohr magneton μ_B and the nuclear magneton μ_N
  • the permeability µ, measured in henries per meter (H·m⁻¹);
  • the vacuum permeability or magnetic constant µ₀, which has the exact value of 4π×10⁻⁷ H·m⁻¹
• in fluid mechanics: dynamic viscosity
• in mathematics: the Möbius function μ(n)
• in maths and physics: µ (micro-), a unit prefix in the metric system for 10⁻⁶ (one millionth)
• in particle physics: muon μ⁻ and antimuuon μ⁺ (formerly called μ-mesons)
• in pharmacology: μ-opioid receptor (MOR)
• in physics: the coefficient of friction
• in physics: the electrical_mobility of a charged particle
• in thermodynamics: chemical potential aka partial molar free energy μ_i

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: | ː

The colon (:) is a punctuation mark used in many ways:

• to introduce lists (like this one)
• before a definition
• before a description
• to make explicit or expand on something, as exemplified on the following line:
• in Finnish and Swedish: to indicate possession (playing the role similar to that of the apostrophe in English)
• before an explanation or an example, as shown on the following line
• to form contractions, as in Swedish: Thomas Gustafsson can be abbreviated as Thomas G:son
• before direct speech or quotations. For example, Wikipedia says:

  In British English, it was once common for a colon to be followed by a hyphen or dash to indicate a restful pause, in a typographical construction known as the “dog’s bollocks”, though this usage is now discouraged.

• to introduce spoken words in written dialogues
• to separate a title and subtitle of a work when written the same line
• in American English: in formal letter writing
• to separate hours:minutes:seconds when written in numbers
• to separate chapter:verse in Biblical citations
• in mathematics and elsewhere to indicate a ratio or a scale
• in a variety of other ways in mathematics
• in certain O:B:Sc:U:Re ways in chemical nomenclature
• in many ::wonderful ways:: in C:\omputing

A triangular colon (ː) is used in International Phonetic Alphabet to mark /mɑːk/ the preceding sound as “long”.

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. | 。

The full stop or period (.) is a punctuation mark typically found at the end of a sentence, unless it is a question or exclamation.

In the 3^rd century BC, the Greeks developed a punctuation system where ὑποστιγμή (the low dot .) functioned as the modern comma, while στιγμὴ μέση (the interpunct or the middle dot ·) played the role similar to that of the modern semicolon; στιγμὴ τελεία (the high dot ˙) marked the end of a completed thought, like the modern full stop.

Classical Latin had no lower-case letters, interword spacing or punctuation; hovvever·the·interpvnct·vvas·sometimes·vsed·to·separate·vvords

Apart from the ends of sentences, full stops are found after initials, some abbreviations and acronyms. In English-speaking countries, they indicate a decimal point, although in Britain until 1970s they used the interpunct for this purpose.

In Chinese and Japanese, a small circle 。 is used to indicate the end of sentence instead of a solid dot .

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子 | zǐ

In Mandarin Chinese, 子 (Pinyin: zǐ 🔊) has many meanings. As a noun, it can signify “a child”, “an offspring”, “a son”, “a person”, “a seed” or “an egg”, while as an adjective, it means “young” or “small”.

子 is also the first of twelve earthly branches. It corresponds to the Year of the Rat (鼠) of the Chinese zodiac; the eleventh month; the hour of the Rat (11 pm to 1 am, “the time when Rats are most active in seeking food”); and the direction 0° (i.e. north). Its associated “fixed element” is Water, 水.

Curiously, a combination of 男 “man” with 子, 男子 (nánzǐ), still means “a man”, not “a boy” as one would expect; similarly, 女 + 子 = 女子 (nǚzǐ) means “a woman”, not “a girl”. (This is not the case in Japanese where 男子 and 女子 mean exactly that: “a boy” and “a girl”, respectively.) However, an anagram of 女子, 子女 (zǐnǚ), means “children”, i.e. “sons and daughters”.

Many historical forms of 子 show a baby with a large head and spread arms (the legs are presumably swaddled). To remember the pronunciation of this word, I think of it as a variant of Latin letter Ƶ (pronounced American way, /ziː/ 🔊).

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沙 | shā

In Mandarin Chinese, 沙 (Pinyin: shā 🔊) means “sand”.

沙 is composed of 氵, which is a radical form of 水 (shuǐ), and the character we’ve just learned, 少 (shǎo). Uncle Hanzi says that 沙 means “sand, as found in a creek” (could have been on the beach as well), hence the semantic link with water, while the connection with 少 is phonetic.

Speaking of the beach: all three pictures in this post are made from the material collected on the beaches of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

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水 | shuǐ

In Mandarin Chinese, 水 (Pinyin: shuǐ 🔊) means “water”.

Water is one of the five elements of Wǔ Xíng. Historical forms of this character, similar to those of 川 (chuān) “river, brook, flow”, look like drawings of a steady stream, but I prefer to think of 水 as depicting a splash or a waterfall.

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