眇

miǎo

blind in one eye; minute, minuscule

Meaning

  • Physical impairment: Blind in one eye or having diminished vision.
  • Scale and dimension: Minute, minuscule, or slight.
  • Perceptual/spatial: Remote, vanishing, or insignificantly small.

Grammar and usage

  • Adjective: Used to describe physical state (e.g., "one-eyed") or size (e.g., "a minute detail").
  • Verb of state: To appear small; to become dim or distant.

Distinctions

There is significant overlap with 渺 (U+7DF2). While 渺 often implies a watery distance or vastness, both glyphs can be used interchangeably to describe something that is "vanishingly small" or distant.

History and forms

Semantic variant: U+7DF2.

Translator notes

The translator should be alert to the tension between the medical and the metaphorical. The glyph allows for both a description of physical deformity (one-eyed) and a comment on insignificance or distance; context must determine whether the text describes a subject's physical appearance or their relative scale/importance.

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