喜

xǐ

like, love, enjoy; joyful thing

Meaning

  • Affective State: Joy, gladness, delight. Often implies an active or exultant state.
  • Preference/Attraction: To like, to be pleased with, or to enjoy. In a transitive sense, this often functions as a precursor to desire.
  • Nominal/Event: A joyful thing, good news, or a happy occasion (e.g., weddings, births).

Grammar and usage

  • Intransitive Predicate: To be joyful or glad.
  • Transitive Verb: To like or take pleasure in an object.
  • Attributive: Modifying a noun (e.g., "a joyful occasion").
  • Noun: The emotion of joy, or the event causing it.

Distinctions

  • vs. 悅 (yuè): While both denote pleasure, 喜 tends toward the active, social, or exultant, whereas 悅 often suggests a more internal, serene satisfaction.
  • vs. 愛 (ài): 喜 denotes preference, delight, or positive predisposition; it lacks the depth of enduring attachment associated with 愛.
  • vs. 欲 (yù): In contexts where 喜 implies "wanting," it maintains a lighter, more positive valence than the hunger or necessity implied by 欲.

History and forms

  • Semantic variant: U+6199.

Graphical notes

  • The presence of the mouth (口) component suggests an outward expression—such as laughter, cheering, or the announcement of news.

Translator notes

  • When encountered as a noun, look for the specific event triggering the emotion.
  • Given the graphic evidence of outward expression, consider translations that emphasize a performative or social manifestation of joy rather than a purely private emotion.

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.