Chinese symbol for “penal”
刑事
xíng shì
criminal; penal
The closest CC-CEDICT match for penal is 刑事 (xíng shì), defined as: criminal; penal.
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
Related words
Other words that share a character with 刑事.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 死刑 | sǐ xíng | death penalty; capital punishment |
| 刑罚 (刑罰) | xíng fá | sentence; penalty |
| 刑法 | xíng fǎ | criminal law |
| 判刑 | pàn xíng | to sentence (to prison etc) |
| 徒刑 | tú xíng | prison sentence |
| 事件 | shì jiàn | incident; event |
| 事情 | shì qing | affair; matter; thing; business; measure word: 件 (jiàn), 桩 (zhuāng) |
| 故事 | gù shì | old practice |
See also: Japanese symbol for “penal”.
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.