Yang

How to spell yang

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yang

What does yang mean?

1. nounIn Chinese philosophy, the active, bright, warm principle that balances and complements yin.

Yang in a sentence

• The diagram showed yin paired with yang as two halves of one circle.

• Traditional medicine aims to balance yang and yin within the body.

Where does yang come from?

Language of origin: Chinese

This word comes directly from Chinese, where yang (written 陽) originally described the sunlit side of a hill or slope, the place that catches the light and warmth. Over centuries of Chinese philosophy it grew into a sweeping abstract idea: the bright, active, masculine, warm principle that complements its dark, passive, cool partner, yin. English picked the term up in the nineteenth century as Western writers began describing Daoist and traditional Chinese thought, and it has stayed almost untouched in spelling and sense ever since. For an English speller the trap is small but real: the word is just three letters following the same pattern as 'yin', and the unusual 'ya-' opening with the soft 'ng' ending can feel foreign on the page.

How the word is built

• yang (single root borrowed whole from Chinese; not built from English prefixes or suffixes)