King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “misfortune”

不幸
bù xìng
misfortune; adversity; unfortunate; sad

The closest CC-CEDICT match for misfortune is 不幸 (bù xìng), defined as: misfortune; adversity; unfortunate; sad; unfortunately; 个 (gè).

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

不 bù
no, not, un-; negative prefix
radical 1 ⼀ · 4 strokes
幸 xìng
favor, fortune, luck; surname
radical 51 ⼲ · 8 strokes

Other Chinese words for “misfortune”

WordPinyinMeaning
急难 (急難)jí nànmisfortune; crisis
患huànto suffer (from illness); to contract (a disease)
祸 (禍)huòdisaster; misfortune
厄运 (厄運)è yùnbad luck; misfortune
变故 (變故)biàn gùan unforeseen event; accident

Related words

Other words that share a character with 不幸.

WordPinyinMeaning
不是bù shìno; is not
不能bù néngcannot; must not
不会 (不會)bù huìimprobable; unlikely
不过 (不過)bù guòonly; merely
不同bù tóngdifferent; distinct
幸福xìng fúhappiness; happy
幸运 (幸運)xìng yùnfortunate; lucky; good fortune; luck
幸好xìng hǎofortunately

See also: Japanese symbol for “misfortune”.

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.