King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “sap”

消磨
xiāo mó
to wear down; to sap; to whittle away; to while away

The closest CC-CEDICT match for sap is 消磨 (xiāo mó), defined as: to wear down; to sap; to whittle away; to while away; to idle away.

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

消 xiāo
news, rumors; to die out, to melt away, to vanish
radical 85 ⽔ · 10 strokes
磨 mó
millstone; to grind, to polish, to rub, to wear out
radical 112 ⽯ · 16 strokes

Other Chinese words for “sap”

WordPinyinMeaning
津泽 (津澤)jīn zéfluids (esp. in plants); sap

Related words

Other words that share a character with 消磨.

WordPinyinMeaning
消息xiāo xi(piece of) news; information; message
取消qǔ xiāoto cancel; to call off; to revoke; to rescind
消费 (消費)xiāo fèito consume (goods and services, resources etc)
消失xiāo shīto disappear; to fade away
消费者 (消費者)xiāo fèi zhěconsumer
消灭 (消滅)xiāo mièto put an end to; to annihilate
折磨zhé móto torment; to torture
琢磨zhuó móto carve and polish (jade); to polish and refine a literary work

See also: Japanese symbol for “sap”.

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.

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