King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “bookworm”

书呆子
shū dāi zi
Traditional: 書呆子
bookworm; pedant; bookish fool

The closest CC-CEDICT match for bookworm is 书呆子 (shū dāi zi), defined as: bookworm; pedant; bookish fool.

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

书 shū
book, letter, document; writing
radical 5 ⼄ · 4 strokes
呆 dāi
dull, simple, stupid
radical 30 ⼝ · 7 strokes
子 zi
son, child; seed, egg; fruit; small thing
radical 39 ⼦ · 3 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “bookworm”

WordPinyinMeaning
书虫 (書蟲)shū chóngbookworm
书蠹 (書蠹)shū dùbookworm (literal and figurative); book louse

Related words

Other words that share a character with 书呆子.

WordPinyinMeaning
书记 (書記)shū jisecretary (head of a Communist Party or Communist Youth League organization); clerk; scribe
秘书 (秘書)mì shūsecretary
图书馆 (圖書館)tú shū guǎnlibrary; measure word: 家 (jiā), 个 (gè)
书籍 (書籍)shū jíbooks; works
读书 (讀書)dú shūto read a book; to study
秘书长 (秘書長)mì shū zhǎngsecretary-general
痴呆chī dāistupid; dull; (medicine) dementia
呆子dāi zifool; sucker
孩子hái zichild

See also: Japanese symbol for “bookworm”.

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.

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