King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “epoch”

时代
shí dài
Traditional: 時代
age; era; epoch; period (in one's life)

The closest CC-CEDICT match for epoch is 时代 (shí dài), defined as: age; era; epoch; period (in one's life); 个 (gè).

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

时 shí
time, season; period, era, age
radical 72 ⽇ · 7 strokes
代 dài
era, generation; to substitute for, to replace
radical 9 ⼈ · 5 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “epoch”

WordPinyinMeaning
世shìlife; age
年头 (年頭)nián tóustart of the year; whole year
纪元 (紀元)jì yuáncalendar era; epoch

Related words

Other words that share a character with 时代.

WordPinyinMeaning
时间 (時間)shí jiān(concept of) time; (duration of) time
时候 (時候)shí houtime; length of time
同时 (同時)tóng shíat the same time; simultaneously
当时 (當時)dāng shíthen; at that time
时期 (時期)shí qīperiod; phase
代表dài biǎorepresentative; delegate
年代nián dàia decade of a century (e.g. the Sixties); age
现代 (現代)xiàn dàimodern times; modern age

See also: Japanese symbol for “epoch”.

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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