King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “seemingly”

看起来
kàn qǐ lai
Traditional: 看起來
seemingly; apparently; looks as if; appears to be; gives the impression that; seems on the face of it to be

The closest CC-CEDICT match for seemingly is 看起来 (kàn qǐ lai), defined as: seemingly; apparently; looks as if; appears to be; gives the impression that; seems on the face of it to be.

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

看 kàn
to look, to see; to examine, to scrutinize
radical 109 ⽬ · 9 strokes
起 qǐ
to begin, to initiate; to rise, to stand up
radical 156 ⾛ · 10 strokes
来 lai
to arrive, to come, to return; in the future, later on
radical 75 ⽊ · 7 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “seemingly”

WordPinyinMeaning
似乎sì hūit seems; seemingly; as if
仿佛fǎng fúto seem; as if; seemingly; alike; similar
仿佛 (彷彿)fǎng fúto seem; as if; seemingly; alike; similar
髣fǎngseemingly

Related words

Other words that share a character with 看起来.

WordPinyinMeaning
看到kàn dàoto see
看看kàn kanto take a look at; to examine
看见 (看見)kàn jiànto see; to catch sight of
看来 (看來)kàn laiapparently; it seems that
看法kàn fǎway of looking at a thing; view
起来 (起來)qǐ laito stand up; to get up; also pr. [qi3lai2]
一起yī qǐ(in) the same place; together; in company (with)
引起yǐn qǐto give rise to; to lead to; to cause; to arouse
出来 (出來)chū láito come out; to appear

See also: Japanese symbol for “seemingly”.

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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