雲

• Literal: Clouds, vapor, mist.
• Metaphorical/Symbolic:
• Obstruction: Concealment or the blocking of clarity (e.g., clouds obscuring the sun, a sovereign, or truth).
• Transience: Ephemerality, instability, or the fleeting quality of existence.
• Cosmological: In Daoist or metaphysical contexts, a visible manifestation of //qi// (氣) condensing. The pairing 雲霧 (clouds and mist) may refer to primordial chaos or a hidden, mystical realm.
• Idiomatic: 雲水 (Cloud-Water): In later Buddhist/Chan contexts, a technical term for a wandering monk or a life of detachment and homelessness.

Predominantly a noun. It can occasionally function as a verb (to cloud over/drift), though such usage is rare.

• 雲 vs. 云: In early texts, 雲 (with the rain radical) and 云 (without) are often interchangeable when referring to clouds. The rain radical serves as a semantic clarifier. However, 云 is also the ubiquitous verb meaning "to say," "to claim," or "it is said."

• Simplified variant: U+4E91.

The rain radical (雨) serves as a semantic clarifier for the glyph's meteorological sense.

When encountering the form 云, the translator must distinguish between shorthand for "cloud" and the verb "to say." If the text uses 雲 (with the radical), it is almost certainly meteorological or metaphorical; if it uses 云, context determines whether it refers to a cloud or a speech act.