聰

The glyph covers a range from physical capacity to intellectual acuity:

1. Auditory Acuity: The physical faculty of hearing or the ability to hear clearly.

2. Perceptive Understanding: The bridge between physical hearing and intellect (understanding what is heard).

3. General Intelligence: Cleverness, brightness, or shrewdness.

• Adjective: Describes a person as clever, acute, or quick-witted.
• Noun: The faculty of hearing or the capacity for perception.
• Verb: "To hear" or "to perceive" (this function was largely superseded by 聞 in later periods).

A distinction exists between the physical sense (hearing) and a person's nature (intelligence). In later texts, 聰 often serves as the auditory counterpart to 明 (visual acuity/brightness); when paired (聰明), they form a compound for general intelligence.

• Readings: Fanqie 倉紅; Tang-period tsung.
• Variants: U+8066 (semantic variant) and U+806A (simplified variant).

The glyph integrates the components for auditory perception (耳) and mental processing (心).

When translating, determine if the context refers to the physical sense of hearing or to a character trait of shrewdness/intelligence.