溟

溟 (Kangxi radical 85, 水+10, 13 strokes, cangjie input 水月日金 (EBAC), four-corner 3718₀, composition ⿰氵冥)

1. sea, ocean
2. drizzling rain
3. dark, obscure

• Kangxi Dictionary: page 640, character 2
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 17947
• Dae Jaweon: page 1046, character 24
• Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 3, page 1709, character 5
• Unihan data for U+6E9F

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 / 形声, OC *meːŋ, *meːŋʔ): semantic 水 + phonetic 冥 (OC *meːŋ).

Thought by classical commentators to be the same word as 冥 (OC *meːŋ, “dark, black (of water)”) (likely in light of the parallelism with the unrelated 海 (OC *hmlɯːʔ, “sea, ocean”) < 晦 (OC *hmɯːs, “dark”)). If so, see 冥 (OC *meːŋ) for etymology.

Schuessler (2007) proposes that there is an outside chance this can be instead connected with Proto-Tibeto-Burman *mlik, whence Old Burmese မ္လစ် (“river”), Burmese မြစ် (mrac), Rakhine [script needed] (mreik, “sea”), Daai Chin [Term?] (mlik (tui), “big water, river, sea”)

溟

1. (literary) sea; ocean

   • 北冥有魚，其名為鯤。 [MSC, trad.]
     北冥有鱼，其名为鲲。 [MSC, simp.]

     Běimíng yǒu yú, qí míng wéi kūn. [Pinyin]

     In the northern ocean there is a fish; its name is Kun.

2. (literary, of the sea) deep; dark
3. (literary, of rain) drizzling

溟

1. used in 溟涬 and 涬溟

• “溟”, in 漢語多功能字庫 (Multi-function Chinese Character Database)‎^[1], 香港中文大學 (the Chinese University of Hong Kong), 2014–
• 莆田市荔城区档案馆 [Putian City Licheng District Archives], editor (2022), “溟”, in 莆仙方言文读字汇 [Puxian Dialect Literary Reading Dictionary] (overall work in Mandarin and Puxian Min), page 159.

(Hyōgai kanji)

1. dark

   Synonym: 冥

2. light rain
3. sea, ocean

From Middle Chinese 溟 (MC meng); compare Mandarin 溟 (míng):

• Go-on: みょう (myō)^{←みやう (myau, historical)}
• Kan-on: めい (mei)^{←めい (mei, historical)}

From Middle Chinese 溟 (MC mengX); compare Mandarin 溟 (mǐng):

• Go-on: みょう (myō)^{←みやう (myau, historical)}
• Kan-on: めい (mei)^{←めい (mei, historical)}

From native Japanese roots:

• Kun: うみ (umi, 溟)、くらい (kurai, 溟い)

• “^▲溟”, in 漢字ぺディア [Kanjipedia]‎^[2] (in Japanese), The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, 2015–2026

溟 (eum 명 (myeong))

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

溟: Hán Nôm readings: mênh, minh

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

• Nom Foundation