To understand realization in the Daoist context we can look at the characters Zhen 真 and Quan 全.

Zhen means real, true, authentic, perfect.  The character is made up of Mu 目, Yi 一, Ba 八, and Shi 十.

Interestingly, three of these components are numbers: Yi 一 is one, Ba 八 is eight, and Shi 十 is ten.

Mu 目 means ‘eye’ or ‘see’, which we can also understand as ‘perceive’ more generally.

Ba 八, eight, we can understand as eight directions, eight fundamental gua/patterns, or ‘all around’, ‘everywhere’.  Also it carries the time meaning, so ‘everywhen’.

Yi 一, one, is unity, wholeness, undivided totality.

Shi 十, is ten, which also stand for completion or totality. But more like a process that has completed.  It is the completion number of five, which represents Earth, Center and Self.

Gathering these meanings together, we have something like:

Seeing the pervasive unity of the diverse and changing world of everywhere and everywhen, the process of realization is complete.

Quan 全 means completion, but carries some additional meanings too.  It also means ‘preserve intact’ or ‘to perfect’ or ‘pure jade of a single color all the way through’.

Some etymologies have the top part of the character as Ru 入， which means ‘enter into’, and some have it as Ren 人 which means ‘person’.

The bottom part is Wang 王, which means ruler.  So the meaning can be thought of as ‘entering nobility’.

Another, older etymology has it as Ji 亼 over Tu 土, showing a lid over earth or earthen vase.

To bring it together in a coherent and useful way, we can think of Realization as a direct knowing of the Real, the Dao, things as they are.  But also there is a further step which is to integrate the Realization until you are ‘jade of a single color all the way through’.