What else does yang mean? Yang is a common Chinese surname. It also refers to a cosmic force present in ancient Chinese philosophy, typically associated with masculinity, sunlight, and the color white.
Yang is the masculine, positive principle in Chinese philosophy. It’s associated with heaven and activity. Have you balanced your yin and yang? In Chinese philosophy, these two qualities or principles, which exist in everyone, represent femaleness (yin) and maleness (yang). Achieving a balance between the two is considered important for having a happy, healthy life. Yang has to do with maleness as well as heaven, light, activity, and warmth. The black and white symbol of yin and yang represents how they complete a whole. Yin and yang are almost always discussed together.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The source said the deputy should be the "yin to the yang" of No 10.
From BBC • Oct. 11, 2025
There is a yin and yang to that.
From Salon • Mar. 25, 2025
“It’s well documented they were yin and yang, so it happened naturally. The deeper rooted he was, the more I could fly.”
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 18, 2024
We grow up to discover there are names in every culture for that — yin and yang, the Apollonian and Dionysian, Vishnu and Shiva, thesis and antithesis, the law of contraries, the dialectic.
From New York Times • Feb. 12, 2024
They are equal and opposite, yin and yang.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
