黑 Radical 203 — black; dark, evil, secret
hēi (first tone, high and level)
black; dark, evil, secret
Radical 20312 strokes0 characters
Where the shape comes from
A window or a face blackened by soot, smoke gathering around an opening the way it darkens the wall above a hearth — the stain of smoke giving the character its colour and its darker figurative senses of evil, secrecy, the hidden. It names darkness itself in 黑暗, and combines transparently in 黑板, a blackboard, and 黑客, a hacker, a modern coinage that simply translates black guest, someone operating in the system’s shadows.
characters filed under 黑
No published character on HSK Guide is filed under this radical yet. Character explorer.