King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “happening”

故
gù
happening; instance; reason; cause

The closest CC-CEDICT match for happening is 故 (gù), defined as: happening; instance; reason; cause; intentional; former.

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

故 gù
reason, cause; happening, instance
radical 66 ⽁ · 9 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 故.

WordPinyinMeaning
故事gù shìold practice
事故shì gùaccident; 桩 (zhuāng),起 (qǐ),次 (cì)
故意gù yìdeliberately; on purpose
故障gù zhàngmalfunction; breakdown
故乡 (故鄉)gù xiānghome; homeland

See also: Japanese symbol for “happening”.

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.