Compounds
Tian is one of the components in hundreds of Chinese compounds. Some significant ones include:
- tianming (天命 "Mandate of Heaven") "divine mandate, God's will; fate, destiny; one's lifespan"
- Tianwen (traditional Chinese: 天問; simplified Chinese: 天问; pinyin: Tiānwèn), the Heavenly Questions section of the Chu Ci.
- tianzi (天子 "Son of Heaven"), an honorific designation for the "Emperor; Chinese sovereign" (Tianzi accounts for 28 of the 140 tian occurrences in the Shi Jing above.)
- tianxia (天下, lit. "all under heaven") "the world, earth; China"
- tiandi (天地, lit "heaven and earth") "the world; the universe"
- Xingtian (刑天) An early mythological hero who fought against Heaven, despite being decapitated.
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Famous quotes containing the word compounds:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)