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 it were, at a deeper level in Nature, and were the most ultimate principles of which the ancient Chinese could conceive. But it so happens that we know a good deal more about the historical origin of the Five-Element theory than about that of the Yin and the Yang, and it will therefore be more convenient to deal with it first." He then discusses Zou Yan (鄒衍; 305 – 240 BC) who is most associated with these theories. Although Yin and Yang are not mentioned in any of the surviving documents of Zou Yan, his school was known as the