Chinese symbol for “subsist”
维持生活
wéi chí shēng huó
Traditional: 維持生活
to subsist; to eke out a living; to keep body and soul together
The closest CC-CEDICT match for subsist is 维持生活 (wéi chí shēng huó), defined as: to subsist; to eke out a living; to keep body and soul together.
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
Traditional forms
Related words
Other words that share a character with 维持生活.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 维护 (維護) | wéi hù | to defend; to safeguard |
| 维持 (維持) | wéi chí | to keep; to maintain; to preserve |
| 思维 (思維) | sī wéi | (line of) thought; thinking |
| 维修 (維修) | wéi xiū | maintenance (of equipment); to protect and maintain |
| 纤维 (纖維) | xiān wéi | fiber; 种 (zhǒng) |
| 维基 (維基) | wéi jī | wiki (Internet) |
| 支持 | zhī chí | to be in favor of; to support |
| 坚持 (堅持) | jiān chí | to persevere with; to persist in |
| 发生 (發生) | fā shēng | to happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises") |
| 活动 (活動) | huó dòng | to exercise; to move about; to work out; shaky; unsteady; loose (tooth etc) |
See also: Japanese symbol for “subsist”.
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.