Chinese symbol for “grain”
年
nián
Traditional: 秊
grain; harvest (old); variant of 年 (nián)
The closest CC-CEDICT match for grain is 年 (nián), defined as: grain; harvest (old); variant of 年 (nián).
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 “grain”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 谷 (穀) | gǔ | grain; corn |
| 粮 (糧) | liáng | grain; food |
| 粒子 | lì zi | grain (of rice); granule |
| 粒 | lì | grain; granule; pellet; particle; classifier for small round objects (peas, bullets, peanuts, pills, grains etc) |
| 纹 (紋) | wén | line; trace; mark; pattern; grain (of wood etc); to tattoo |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 年.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 年代 | nián dài | a decade of a century (e.g. the Sixties); age |
| 今年 | jīn nián | this year |
| 每年 | měi nián | every year; each year |
| 青年 | qīng nián | youth; youthful years |
| 多年 | duō nián | many years; for many years |
| 年轻 (年輕) | nián qīng | young |
See also: Japanese symbol for “grain”.
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.