King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “discovery”

发现
fā xiàn
Traditional: 發現
to notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect; a discovery

The closest CC-CEDICT match for discovery is 发现 (fā xiàn), defined as: to notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect; a discovery.

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

发 fā
to issue, to dispatch, to send out; hair
radical 29 ⼜ · 5 strokes
现 xiàn
to appear, to manifest; current, now
radical 96 ⽟ · 8 strokes

Traditional forms

Related words

Other words that share a character with 发现.

WordPinyinMeaning
发展 (發展)fā zhǎndevelopment; growth
发生 (發生)fā shēngto happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises")
开发 (開發)kāi fāto exploit (a resource); to open up (for development); to develop
发布 (發佈)fā bùvariant of 发布 (fā bù)
现在 (現在)xiàn zàinow; at present; currently
出现 (出現)chū xiànto appear; to arise; to emerge; to show up
实现 (實現)shí xiànto achieve; to implement; to realize; to bring about
表现 (表現)biǎo xiànto show; to show off

See also: Japanese symbol for “discovery”.

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.