King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “mastery”

火候
huǒ hou
heat control; (fig.) mastery; (fig.) crucial moment

The closest CC-CEDICT match for mastery is 火候 (huǒ hou), defined as: heat control; (fig.) mastery; (fig.) crucial moment.

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

火 huǒ
fire, flame; to burn; anger, rage
radical 86 ⽕ · 4 strokes
候 hou
to wait, to expect; to visit; to greet
radical 9 ⼈ · 10 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 火候.

WordPinyinMeaning
火车 (火車)huǒ chētrain; measure word: 列 (liè), 节 (jié), 班 (bān), 趟 (tàng)
火箭huǒ jiànrocket; measure word: 枚 (méi)
火车站 (火車站)huǒ chē zhàntrain station
火灾 (火災)huǒ zāiserious fire (in a city or a forest etc)
火山huǒ shānvolcano
大火dà huǒconflagration; large fire; 场 (cháng)
时候 (時候)shí houtime; length of time
候选人 (候選人)hòu xuǎn réncandidate; measure word: 名 (míng)

See also: Japanese symbol for “mastery”.

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.