Chinese symbol for “catastrophe”
灾难
zāi nàn
Traditional: 災難
disaster; catastrophe
The closest CC-CEDICT match for catastrophe is 灾难 (zāi nàn), defined as: disaster; catastrophe.
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
Traditional forms
Other Chinese words for “catastrophe”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 灾变 (災變) | zāi biàn | catastrophe; cataclysmic change |
| 浩劫 | hào jié | calamity; catastrophe |
| 灾厄 (災厄) | zāi è | adversity; catastrophe |
| 大灾 (大災) | dà zāi | calamity; catastrophe |
| 恶事 (惡事) | è shì | malicious deed; misdeed; disaster; catastrophe |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 灾难.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 灾害 (災害) | zāi hài | calamity; disaster |
| 火灾 (火災) | huǒ zāi | serious fire (in a city or a forest etc) |
| 灾区 (災區) | zāi qū | disaster area; stricken region |
| 救灾 (救災) | jiù zāi | to relieve disaster; to help disaster victims |
| 灾民 (災民) | zāi mín | victim (of a disaster) |
| 困难 (困難) | kùn nan | difficult; challenging |
| 难道 (難道) | nán dào | don't tell me ...; could it be that...? |
| 难以 (難以) | nán yǐ | hard to (predict, imagine etc) |
See also: Japanese symbol for “catastrophe”.
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.