King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “instigate”

怂恿
sǒng yǒng
Traditional: 慫恿
to instigate; to incite; to urge; to encourage

The closest CC-CEDICT match for instigate is 怂恿 (sǒng yǒng), defined as: to instigate; to incite; to urge; to encourage.

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

怂 sǒng
to arouse, to incite, to instigate
radical 61 ⼼ · 8 strokes
恿 yǒng
to instigate, to incite, to alarm
radical 61 ⼼ · 11 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “instigate”

WordPinyinMeaning
教唆jiào suōto instigate; to incite
策反cè fǎnto instigate (rebellion etc); incitement (e.g. to desertion within opposing camp)
鼓动 (鼓動)gǔ dòngto urge (an activity that may be beneficial, harmful or neutral); to encourage; to agitate; to instigate; to incite; to beat; to flap (wings, a fan etc)
偾 (僨)fènto instigate; to ruin
煽动 (煽動)shān dòngto incite; to instigate

Related words

Other words that share a character with 怂恿.

WordPinyinMeaning
认怂 (認慫)rèn sóng(coll.) to back down; to concede defeat; to lose one's nerve

See also: Japanese symbol for “instigate”.

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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