King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “outdated”

老
lǎo
prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity; old (of people); venerable (person); experienced

The closest CC-CEDICT match for outdated is 老 (lǎo), defined as: prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity; old (of people); venerable (person); experienced; of long standing; always.

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

老 lǎo
old, aged; experienced
radical 125 ⽼ · 6 strokes

Other Chinese words for “outdated”

WordPinyinMeaning
背时 (背時)bèi shíoutdated; out of luck
老式lǎo shìold-fashioned; old type

Related words

Other words that share a character with 老.

WordPinyinMeaning
老师 (老師)lǎo shīteacher
老婆lǎo pó(coll.) wife
老板lǎo bǎnvariant of 老板 (lǎo bǎn)
老人lǎo rénold man or woman; the elderly
老公lǎo gōng(coll.) husband

See also: Japanese symbol for “outdated”.

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.