How to Write 泯 (mǐn) — Meaning “to vanish; to die out”

Imagine a group of people (民) standing in water (氵) that slowly rises until they vanish from sight. This visual of people being submerged and disappearing helps link the character to its meaning 'to vanish; to die out'.

Start by writing the water radical 氵 as three dots: dot, dot, then a short horizontal stroke. Then write 民: first a left-falling stroke (撇), then a horizontal stroke, followed by a vertical hook, a short horizontal, and finally a right-falling stroke (斜钩). A common mistake is making the vertical hook in 民 too long or forgetting to connect it properly to the right-falling stroke.

泯 has 民 on the right and means 'to vanish', while 汊 has 叉 (chā, fork) on the right and means a branch of a river (a forked waterway). 㳄 (xián) is very rare and means 'saliva'; its right part looks like a mouth with liquid, so it's visually different from 民. In usage, 泯 is metaphorical (disappearance), 汊 is geographical (river fork), and 㳄 is not used in modern Chinese.

泯 appears mostly in formal or literary phrases like 泯灭 (mǐn miè, to be extinguished) and 未泯 (wèi mǐn, not yet lost), often describing abstract concepts such as conscience or hope. Culturally, it conveys a sense of complete loss or fading, as in the idiom '天理未泯' (common sense not yet destroyed), implying moral principles that survive despite chaos.

Common words containing 泯 include: 泯灭 (mǐn miè) — to die out; to be extinguished; 未泯 (wèi mǐn) — Not yet lost / Not yet extinguished; 泯除 (mǐn chú) — to eliminate; to remove.