雨
雨 (yǔ) — rain. Pictograph of droplets falling from a sky-line. Classical life: 春雨贵如油 — spring rain is as precious as oil. Grammar: free morpheme — also: rain; (literary) to rain; (of rain, snow etc) to fall; to precipitate; to wet
Closest English meanings
rain·rainfall·to rain·shower·downpour
The Calligrapher — Huáng Tíngjiān 黄庭坚
Song master of elongated, radical running and cursive script.
Song calligrapher (1045–1105), master of running script/cursive script — Song master of long, sweeping, deliberately stretched running strokes. Song dynasty
Cultural Story
Du Fu, in his 'Joy at Rain on a Spring Night,' wrote that the good rain knows the season and comes as spring begins, stealing in on a wind past midnight. The 雨 he praised was the 雨水 that wakes the seedlings, not the 雷雨 that wrecks them. For a farmer-poet the falling weather was a guest with manners, and he listened to it on the roof as a promise kept.
Energy Reading
Water (水)
Comparative symbology, not fortune-telling.
Common words & phrases
- 下雨 rain · to rain · raining · precipitate
- 雨天 rainy day · wet day · rainy weather
- 雨水 rainwater · rain · spring rain (solar term)
- 大雨 heavy rain · downpour · torrential rain
- 风雨 wind and rain · storm · tempest
- 雷雨 thunderstorm · thunder and rain · thunder and lightning
Read the story behind the character
A commuter checks the phone and sees 下雨 across the whole evening, with a 雷雨 cell moving through by nine. The app flags 雨水 as the first solar term already past, and the 雨天 icon means the bus will run slow. She packs a foldable cover and texts home that the 风雨 may delay the train, then watches the sky go grey.
Why this character belongs on skin
There is a sound older than any language. 雨 is rain — the pictograph itself shows drops falling from a cloud, the oldest weather in the written world. Farmers read it as heaven's mercy, the moment the dry field breathes again. The Daoists call it the breath of heaven descending without choosing who deserves it; the just and the unjust both get wet, and that is the point. To wear 雨 is to make peace with receiving. We spend our lives trying to control the sky, and the rain laughs. This mark is for the one who has stood in a storm and felt smaller, and calmer for it. Let it sit on your skin like water on stone — patient, impartial, renewing. Some marks are armor; this one is a window. Carry the rain and you carry the understanding that you are not the weather, only the ground that learns to drink.
Own this character
Purchase delivers the original SVG of this glyph, brushed by Huáng Tíngjiān 黄庭坚, ready to place on skin, paper, or screen.