Dictionaries › Chinese

天命

Pronunciation: /tʰi̯ɛn⁵⁵ miŋ⁵¹/

“天命” is a Chinese word. Its 8 meanings in English:

noun

  1. the myriad of things in nature which make up the law of nature or natural law
  2. the will of heaven
  3. the Mandate of Heaven
  4. one's fate or destiny
  5. one's nature or natural instincts
  6. one's innate skills or gifts
  7. one's life span or life expectancy

proper noun

  1. the Tianming era (a Chinese era name; the era of Nurhaci as khan of the Later Jin, from the proclamation of the dynasty in 1616 until 1627)

Etymology

Attested in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, where 命 (mìng) was not yet differentiated from 令 (lìng) by the addition of 口 (kǒu). The concept first appears in separated form in the early Western Zhou: The compound 天令 is attested from the mid-Western Zhou: Goldin (2017) links Zhou's concept 天命 (tiānmìng) to Shang's concept 帝令 (dìlìng) "the Deity's command" attested in the Shang's oracle bones. For…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “天命” there

More Chinese words

About this dictionary

The Chinese dictionary on Glottosphere has 147,621 entries with a page. Browse the Chinese dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.