羽

• Physical: Flight feathers or plumage; the wing as an organ.
• Music Theory: One of the five notes of the ancient pentatonic scale (宮, 商, 角, 徵, 羽). In ritual or tuning contexts, this is a technical term for a specific pitch.
• Daoist/Alchemical: Used in the compound 羽化 (//yǔhuà//, "to grow feathers") as a technical euphemism for transcendence—the transformation of a human into an immortal (//xian//) or the liberation of the soul from the body upon death.

Primarily a noun. It rarely functions as a standalone verb; when it implies action (such as sprouting plumage), it typically appears within a conceptual compound.

• 羽 vs. 毛 (//máo//): 羽 specifically denotes flight feathers or the apparatus of flight, whereas 毛 refers to general hair, fur, or downy feathers.
• 羽 vs. 翼 (//yì//): Both can refer to the wing; however, 羽 more frequently emphasizes the physical composition (the plumage), while 翼 often emphasizes the function of the wing.

• Military Context: The glyph can refer to the "flanks" or outer edges of an army formation. Translators should be cautious not to over-extend this to modern notions of "organizational support," as the early metaphor is tied to the physical geometry of wings.
• Disambiguation: When encountering this glyph, first identify the domain: biological (plumage/wings), military (flanks), musicological (the fourth note of the scale), or mystical/funerary (ascension).