King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “abhorrent”

令人发指
lìng rén fà zhǐ
Traditional: 令人髮指
(idiom) to make one feel a sense of revulsion; abhorrent; heinous; deeply disturbing

The closest CC-CEDICT match for abhorrent is 令人发指 (lìng rén fà zhǐ), defined as: (idiom) to make one feel a sense of revulsion; abhorrent; heinous; deeply disturbing.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

令 lìng
command, decree, order; magistrate; to allow, to cause
radical 9 ⼈ · 5 strokes
人 rén
man, person; people
radical 9 ⼈ · 2 strokes
发 fà
to issue, to dispatch, to send out; hair
radical 29 ⼜ · 5 strokes
指 zhǐ
finger, toe; to point, to indicate
radical 64 ⼿ · 9 strokes

Traditional forms

Related words

Other words that share a character with 令人发指.

WordPinyinMeaning
命令mìng lìngorder; command
令人lìng rénto cause one (to do sth); to make one (angry, delighted etc)
下令xià lìngto give an order; to issue an order
法令fǎ lìngdecree; ordinance
司令sī lìngcommanding officer
指令zhǐ lìngto order; to command; an order; a command; an instruction
人民rén mínthe people
人们 (人們)rén menpeople
发展 (發展)fā zhǎndevelopment; growth
指出zhǐ chūto indicate; to point out

See also: Japanese symbol for “abhorrent”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.