King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “smear”

抹
mǒ
to smear; to wipe; to erase; classifier for wisps of cloud, light-beams etc

The closest CC-CEDICT match for smear is 抹 (mǒ), defined as: to smear; to wipe; to erase; classifier for wisps of cloud, light-beams etc.

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

抹 mǒ
to apply; to erase, to smear, to wipe off
radical 64 ⼿ · 8 strokes

Other Chinese words for “smear”

WordPinyinMeaning
糊hūto smear; to daub; to cover (a surface with sth sticky or paste-like); Taiwan pr. [hu2]
涂片 (塗片)tú piànsmear (medical sample); microscope slide
涂敷 (塗敷)tú fūto smear; to daub
涂污 (塗污)tú wūto smear; to deface
敷贴 (敷貼)fū tiēto smear; to apply glue or ointment to a surface

Related words

Other words that share a character with 抹.

WordPinyinMeaning
涂抹 (塗抹)tú mǒto paint; to smear
抹黑mǒ hēito discredit; to defame
抹杀 (抹殺)mǒ shāto erase; to cover traces
抹布mā bùcleaning rag; also pr. [mo3 bu4]
抹煞mǒ shāvariant of 抹杀 (mǒ shā)
拐弯抹角 (拐彎抹角)guǎi wān mò jiǎolit. going round the curves and skirting the corners (idiom); fig. to speak in a roundabout way

See also: Japanese symbol for “smear”.

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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