King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “inferior”

劣势
liè shì
Traditional: 劣勢
inferior; disadvantaged

The closest CC-CEDICT match for inferior is 劣势 (liè shì), defined as: inferior; disadvantaged.

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

劣 liè
low-quality, inferior, bad
radical 19 ⼒ · 6 strokes
势 shì
power, force; tendency, attitude
radical 19 ⼒ · 8 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “inferior”

WordPinyinMeaning
低等dī děnginferior
逊色 (遜色)xùn sèinferior (often in the combination 毫無遜色|毫无逊色, not in the least inferior)
劣lièinferior
蹩脚 (蹩腳)bié jiǎoinferior; shoddy
伪劣 (偽劣)wěi lièinferior; false

Related words

Other words that share a character with 劣势.

WordPinyinMeaning
恶劣 (惡劣)è lièvile; nasty
低劣dī lièinferior quality; substandard
劣质 (劣質)liè zhìshoddy; of poor quality
卑劣bēi lièbase; mean
优劣 (優劣)yōu liègood and bad; merits and drawbacks
优势 (優勢)yōu shìsuperiority; dominance
势力 (勢力)shì lipower; influence
趋势 (趨勢)qū shìtrend; tendency

See also: Japanese symbol for “inferior”.

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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