Chinese symbol for “lightning”
电
diàn
Traditional: 電
lightning; electricity; electric (bound form); to get (or give) an electric shock
The closest CC-CEDICT match for lightning is 电 (diàn), defined as: lightning; electricity; electric (bound form); to get (or give) an electric shock; phone call or telegram etc; to send via telephone or telegram etc.
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 “lightning”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 闪电 (閃電) | shǎn diàn | lightning; measure word: 道 (dào) |
| 闪 (閃) | shǎn | to dodge; to duck out of the way |
| 列缺 | liè quē | lightning (archaic word) |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 电.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 电影 (電影) | diàn yǐng | movie; film; measure word: 部 (bù) |
| 电话 (電話) | diàn huà | telephone; measure word: 部 (bù) |
| 电视 (電視) | diàn shì | television; TV; 台 (tái),部 (bù) |
| 电子 (電子) | diàn zǐ | electronic; electron (particle physics) |
| 电脑 (電腦) | diàn nǎo | computer; 台 (tái) |
| 电视台 (電視台) | diàn shì tái | television station |
See also: Japanese symbol for “lightning”.
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.