King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “except”

除
chú
to get rid of; to remove; to exclude; to eliminate

The closest CC-CEDICT match for except is 除 (chú), defined as: to get rid of; to remove; to exclude; to eliminate; to wipe out; to divide.

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

除 chú
to eliminate, to remove, to wipe out
radical 170 ⾩ · 10 strokes

Other Chinese words for “except”

WordPinyinMeaning
除开 (除開)chú kāibesides; except
除过 (除過)chú guò(dialect) except; besides

Related words

Other words that share a character with 除.

WordPinyinMeaning
除了chú leapart from; besides; in addition to (used to exclude, as in 除了他,誰也沒來|除了他,谁也没来[chu2 le5 ta1 , shei2 ye3 mei2 lai2] "apart from him, nobody ca
废除 (廢除)fèi chúto abolish; to abrogate
删除 (刪除)shān chúto delete; to cancel
解除jiě chúto remove; to sack
除非chú fēionly if (..., or otherwise, ...); only when
消除xiāo chúto eliminate; to remove

See also: Japanese symbol for “except”.

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.