The kanji 黛 primarily represents a specific dark color, particularly the color of eyebrows or the area around the eyes. It can refer to the natural darkness or a painted/applied darkening, often associated with beauty and cosmetic enhancement. The character encapsulates a sense of refined beauty and definition, frequently seen in visual descriptions of elegant features.

・On-yomi (音読み): たい (tai) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): まゆずみ (mayuzumi)

⚫︎黛色 Translation: eyebrow color; a dark color resembling the color of eyebrows. ⚫︎黛眉 Translation: beautiful eyebrows. (Often used in poetry to describe beautiful women) ⚫︎眉黛 Translation: eyebrow makeup; eyebrow pencil or powder.

The kanji 黛 is a 形声文字 (keisei moji), a phono-semantic compound character. It is composed of two parts: the semantic component 眉 (mayu), which means "eyebrow", and the phonetic component 黽 (bin), which provides the sound element. The combination of these parts results in a kanji that depicts the color or the substance used to enhance the eyebrows, hence the meaning related to the eyebrows. The component 眉 relates it directly to the subject of eyebrows, while the 黽 hints the sound of the word, which has evolved into its current reading.