King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “strum”

拨动
bō dòng
Traditional: 撥動
to stir; to prod; to poke; to move sideways

The closest CC-CEDICT match for strum is 拨动 (bō dòng), defined as: to stir; to prod; to poke; to move sideways; to strum (on a guitar 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

拨 bō
to stir, to move, to distribute, to allocate
radical 64 ⼿ · 8 strokes
动 dòng
to move, to happen; movement, action
radical 19 ⼒ · 6 strokes

Traditional forms

Related words

Other words that share a character with 拨动.

WordPinyinMeaning
拨款 (撥款)bō kuǎnto allocate funds; appropriation
拨打 (撥打)bō dǎto call; to dial
拨乱反正 (撥亂反正)bō luàn fǎn zhèngbring order out of chaos; set to rights things which have been thrown into disorder
挑拨 (挑撥)tiǎo bōto incite disharmony; to instigate
拨号 (撥號)bō hàoto dial a telephone number
调拨 (調撥)diào bōto send (products); to allocate
活动 (活動)huó dòngto exercise; to move about; to work out; shaky; unsteady; loose (tooth etc)
运动 (運動)yùn dòngto move; to exercise

See also: Japanese symbol for “strum”.

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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