Chinese symbol for “onset”
发病
fā bìng
Traditional: 發病
(of an illness) to occur; (of a person) to get sick; to fall ill; onset (of a medical condition)
The closest CC-CEDICT match for onset is 发病 (fā bìng), defined as: (of an illness) to occur; (of a person) to get sick; to fall ill; onset (of a medical condition).
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 “onset”
Related words
Other words that share a character with 发病.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 发展 (發展) | fā zhǎn | development; growth |
| 发生 (發生) | fā shēng | to happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises") |
| 发现 (發現) | fā xiàn | to notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect |
| 开发 (開發) | kāi fā | to exploit (a resource); to open up (for development); to develop |
| 发布 (發佈) | fā bù | variant of 发布 (fā bù) |
| 病毒 | bìng dú | virus |
| 疾病 | jí bìng | disease; sickness; ailment |
| 病人 | bìng rén | sick person; patient |
See also: Japanese symbol for “onset”.
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.