没

The glyph operates across two primary semantic poles:

1. Physical/Active: To sink, drown, or be covered by water; to vanish beneath a surface (e.g., the sun setting); metaphorical destruction or annihilation.

2. Existential Negation: Absence, "not have," none, missing; failure of occurrence.

• Contrast with 不 (bù): While 不 typically denotes refusal, contradiction, or a simple "not," 没 specifically implies absence or non-existence.
• Contrast with 无 (wú): Both denote non-existence, but differ in aspect. 无 often describes a static state of void or inherent nothingness; 没 frequently implies a transition—something that was once present and is now gone, or something that failed to materialize.

// Tang-period reading: //mət.

• Variants: U+6C92 and U+6CA1 are orthographic variants; they do not alter the lexical range.

The glyph is consistently tied to the water radical (氵).

When encountering this glyph in early texts, determine if the context implies a process (the act of sinking/vanishing) or a state (the fact of being absent). While later Chinese maintains a sharp phonological divide between these senses (mò vs. méi), older layers are more porous; the Tang reading (*mət) suggests a closer historical link between "sinking" and "disappearing/not being."