King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “glow”

发光
fā guāng
Traditional: 發光
to emit light; to shine; to glow; to glisten; to be luminous

The closest CC-CEDICT match for glow is 发光 (fā guāng), defined as: to emit light; to shine; to glow; to glisten; to be luminous.

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
光 guāng
light; bright, brilliant; only, merely
radical 10 ⼉ · 6 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “glow”

WordPinyinMeaning
熠yìto glow; to flash
焕发 (煥發)huàn fāto shine; to glow

Related words

Other words that share a character with 发光.

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")
发现 (發現)fā xiànto notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect
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)
阳光 (陽光)yáng guāngsunshine; (of personality) upbeat; energetic
曝光bào guāngto expose (photography); (fig.) to expose (a scandal)
时光 (時光)shí guāngtime (esp. as sth that passes)

See also: Japanese symbol for “glow”.

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.