The yin-yang has often been used in the West to symbolize perfect balance. But that's not the meaning that was intended.

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Here’s how language changes: Take a term rendered in a foreign language, let’s say “yin and yang.” Have people start ...

There’s a lot of yin-yang words in our lingo, known as contranyms, like “ravel,” which means both “to entangle” and “to disentangle,” “bolt” (to secure and to flee), and left (remained and departed).