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.