Yin and yang Da Cidian") enter "yangyin" *陽陰. While "yang" and "yin" can occur together in context, "yangyin" is not synonymous with "yinyang". The linguistic term "irreversible binomial" refers to a collocation of two words A-B that cannot be idiomatically reversed as B-A, for example, English "cat and mouse" (not *"mouse and cat") and "friend or foe" (not *"foe or friend"). Similarly, the usual pattern among Chinese binomial compounds is for positive A and negative B, where the A word is dominant or privileged over B, for example, "tiandi" 天地 "heaven and earth" and "nannü" 男女 "men and women". "Yinyang" meaning "dark and
Yin and yang yang are represented by broken and solid lines: yin is broken (⚋) and yang is solid (⚊). These are then combined into trigrams, which are more yang ("e.g." ☱) or more yin ("e.g." ☵) depending on the number of broken and solid lines ("e.g.", ☰ is heavily yang, while ☷ is heavily yin), and trigrams are combined into hexagrams ("e.g." ䷕ and ䷟). The relative positions and numbers of yin and yang lines within the trigrams determines the meaning of a trigram, and in hexagrams the upper trigram is considered yang with respect to the lower trigram, yin, which allows