Chinese symbol for “medicine”
药
yào
Traditional: 藥
medicine; drug; substance used for a specific purpose (e.g. poisoning, explosion, fermenting); 种 (zhǒng),服 (fù),味 (wèi)
The closest CC-CEDICT match for medicine is 药 (yào), defined as: medicine; drug; substance used for a specific purpose (e.g. poisoning, explosion, fermenting); 种 (zhǒng),服 (fù),味 (wèi); to poison.
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 “medicine”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 医学 (醫學) | yī xué | medicine; medical science |
| 药剂 (藥劑) | yào jì | medicine; medicament |
| 医科 (醫科) | yī kē | medicine (as a science); medical science |
| 药物 (藥物) | yào wù | medicaments; pharmaceuticals |
| 药品 (藥品) | yào pǐn | medicaments; medicine |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 药.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 药物 (藥物) | yào wù | medicaments; pharmaceuticals |
| 药品 (藥品) | yào pǐn | medicaments; medicine |
| 医药 (醫藥) | yī yào | medical care and medicines; medicine (drug) |
| 弹药 (彈藥) | dàn yào | ammunition |
| 农药 (農藥) | nóng yào | agricultural chemical; farm chemical |
| 中药 (中藥) | zhōng yào | traditional Chinese medicine; measure word: 服 (fù) |
See also: Japanese symbol for “medicine”.
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.