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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

亮

liàng
bright; brilliant; radiant
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 亠
  • 9 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *raŋs): semantic 人 (“person”) + phonetic 京 (OC *kraŋ). In the variant 𠅙, the body of the tower is more recognizable.

Part of an Austroasiatic word family; compare Khmer [script needed] (-rāṃṅa, “to be light; to be bright”) (Schuessler, 2007), from Proto-Mon-Khmer *raaŋʔ (“light; to shine”); as well as:

:* ស្រាំង (srang, “to be pale; to be colourless”) with 爽 (OC *sraŋʔ),

:* [script needed] (brāṅa, “to grow light (after dark)”) with 炳 (OC *praŋʔ).

:* បំព្រាង (bɑmpriəng, “to shed a pale light”) with 明 (OC *mraŋ).

Alternatively, STEDT compares it to Proto-Kuki-Chin *klaaŋ-I, *klaan-II (“to shine; light; bright”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese人 “man; person; people (Classifier: 個／个 m c; 隻／只 h)”
  • soundChinese京 “capital (city)”

Related: Proto-Mon-Khmer *raaŋʔ, Proto-Kuki-Chin *klaaŋ-I

Words built on it: 漂亮, 月亮

Meanings

character
  1. bright; brilliant; radiant
  2. loud and clear
  3. lamp; light
  4. to shine; to illuminate
  5. to be the highlight; to be epic
  6. to make one's voice loud and clear; to raise one's voice

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 明朗、光明。 例：明亮、亮晃晃、烏黑亮麗
  2. 聲音響亮清澈。 例：宏亮、嘹亮、響亮
  3. 顯露、展示。 例：亮票、亮牌、亮相
  4. 清楚、明白。 例：亮察、心明眼亮
  5. 忠貞正直。 例：亮直、高風亮節

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 亮 was written 字形演變

  1. 亮 in Clerical script
    Clerical
    隸書
    Han
  2. 亮 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 亮