Diffuznye terminy cveta kitajskogo jazyka [Fuzzy colour terms in Chinese language]

The article focuses upon polysemous Chinese colour terms. The basic of these terms is qing, which stands for green, blue and black colours. Having analyzed some facts, it was discovered that originally qing had stood for green. As regards the meaning “black”, it was not dictated (as some Chinese linguists say), but either had come from some dialect, or during certain period had the meaning “dark” and later became transformed. The synonyms of qing in green-blue part of spectrum are: cang, bi, piao and cong, but they have very limited contextual combination abilities.