冰

• Noun: Ice as a substance, typically denoting a mass or layer of frozen water.
• Adjective: Frozen; ice-cold.
• Verb: To freeze; to turn into ice (the phase transition from liquid to solid).
• Metaphorical extensions: Used to describe clarity and transparency, including purity/integrity of character (e.g., 冰心) or emotional frigidity and rigidity of spirit.

• Contrast with 霜 (frost) and 雪 (snow): 冰 specifically denotes a mass or layer of ice.
• Contrast with 寒: While 寒 refers to climatic conditions, air temperature, or the sensation of cold, 冰 refers to the physical substance resulting from freezing or the process of transformation itself.

// Tang-period reading: //biəng biəng (Fanqie: 筆陵).

• Variants: Includes semantic/orthographic variants such as U+51AB, U+6C37, and U+23C9D. These represent standard script drift (primarily in the water radical or the 丙 component) without altering lexical meaning.