黑夜 (hēi yè) — dark night; night (emphasizing darkness) | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

Literary word for 'dark night,' emphasizing the blackness of night rather than just the time. More written and evocative than the everyday 晚上.

noun

dark nightnight (emphasizing darkness)

Examples

黑夜。
hēi yè Lǐ shén me dōu kàn bú jiàn.
You can't see anything in the dark night.
黑夜。
Tā men zài yí piàn hēi yè zhōng mō suǒ qián jìn.
They groped forward in the pitch-black night.
黑夜，。
Màn cháng de hēi yè zhōng yú guò qù le, tiān liàng le.
The long dark night finally ended, and dawn broke.

Origin

Compound word

构词法gòucífǎ

偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

黑 names dark, 夜 names night; together they mean dark night.

Characters in this word

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The shape of 黑 seems to come from drawing a head marked with dots, usually read as facial tattoos.

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

Meaning part形符xíngfú

夕夕xīmoon

Sound part声符shēngfú

亦

亦yì夜yè

The sound has drifted apartThe sound part was a clue two thousand years ago — it often still helps, but not always.

The form 夜 pairs 亦 as a sound part with 夕 as a moon part, for night. In the modern shape, the 亦 part is broken up and one stroke merges into 夕.

Appears in

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