Yin and yang a hill" in Huayin 華陰, which is north of Mount Hua 華山 in Shaanxi province. In Japan, the characters are used in western Honshu to delineate the north-side San'in region 山陰 from the south-side San'yō region 山陽, separated by the Chugoku mountain range 中国山地. English "yin", "yang", and "yin-yang" are familiar loanwords of Chinese origin. The "Oxford English Dictionary" defines: yin (jɪn) Also Yin, Yn. [Chinese "yīn" shade, feminine; the moon.] a. In Chinese philosophy, the feminine or negative principle (characterized by dark, wetness, cold, passivity, disintegration, etc.) of the two opposing cosmic forces into which creative energy divides and
Yin and yang 阳 "sunny side" are linguistically analyzable in terms of Chinese characters, pronunciations and etymology, meanings, topography, and loanwords. The Traditional Chinese characters and for the words "yīn" and "yáng" are both classified as radical- esphonetic characters, combining the semantically significant "mound; hill" radical or with the phonetic indicators "ying" and "yang" . The first phonetic "yīn" "cloudy" ideographically combines "jīn" "now; present" and "yún" "cloud", denoting the "今 presence of 云 clouds". The second phonetic "yáng" "bright" originally pictured the "sun" with "rays coming down". This phonetic is expanded with the "sun" radical into "yáng" 暘 "rising sun; sunshine". The