Blazing fire

It means burning, blazing, or lighting a ritual fire. In the Shang period, oracle-bone inscriptions—records written on bones for divination—use 燎 in sacrificial formulas mentioning a deity and an offering. Later ritual texts describe burning piled wood so smoke rises toward heaven. The written form 燎 developed from 尞 with 火, the character for fire, added.

In Chinese, 燎原 describes fire burning across a plain; 星火燎原 turns that image into a saying about a small beginning spreading widely. Japanese also uses 燎 in fire-related compounds such as 燎火 and 燎原, and records a ritual-fire sense.