King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “literary”

文
wén
language; culture; writing; formal

The closest CC-CEDICT match for literary is 文 (wén), defined as: language; culture; writing; formal; literary; gentle.

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

文 wén
culture, literature, writing
radical 67 ⽂ · 4 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 文.

WordPinyinMeaning
文化wén huàculture; civilization
文章wén zhāngarticle; essay
文件wén jiàndocument; file
文学 (文學)wén xuéliterature
文明wén míngcivilized; civilization
文字wén zìcharacter; script

See also: Japanese symbol for “literary”.

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.