晝

The bright period between sunrise and sunset.

Compound ideogram formed from:

日 (날 일) — “sun,” representing light and daytime.

聿 (붓 율) — here not as “brush,” but symbolizing division or marking lines.

According to the Shuowen Jiezi (説文解字 shuōwén jiězì), 聿 is a simplified form of 畫 (“to draw lines”), implying the division between day and night — i.e., marking the boundary of daylight.

Thus, the combined form originally meant “the drawn (marked) part of the sky belonging to the sun’s time” — in other words, daytime.

晝夜 (주야) — day and night

晝間 (주간) — daytime, during the day

晝行 (주행) — travel by day

晝寢 (주침) — daytime nap

晝光 (주광) — daylight, sunlight

晝警 (주경) — alert during the day (military context)

In East Asian poetry and cosmology, 晝夜 (day and night) represent the alternating forces of 陽 (yang) and 陰 (yin) — light and dark, activity and rest.

「晝以作，夜以息。」

“By day one acts, by night one rests.” — Book of Rites (禮記)

In Confucian symbolism, 晝 corresponds to the manifest world of social order and moral clarity.

Daoist writings sometimes use it metaphorically for the visible realm, in contrast to 夜 as the hidden or spiritual world.

𦘙 — Ancient variant