King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “survive”

存活
cún huó
to survive (a serious accident); survival

The closest CC-CEDICT match for survive is 存活 (cún huó), defined as: to survive (a serious accident); survival.

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

存 cún
to exist; to survive, to maintain; to keep, to store; to deposit
radical 39 ⼦ · 6 strokes
活 huó
to exist, to live, to survive; living, working
radical 85 ⽔ · 9 strokes

Other Chinese words for “survive”

WordPinyinMeaning
幸存 (倖存)xìng cúnto survive (a disaster)
活下去huó xià qùto survive; to keep on living
残存 (殘存)cán cúnto survive; remnant
成活chéng huóto survive
活下huó xiàto survive

Related words

Other words that share a character with 存活.

WordPinyinMeaning
存在cún zàito exist; to be
生存shēng cúnto exist; to survive
保存bǎo cúnto conserve; to preserve; to keep; to store; (computing) to save (a file etc)
储存 (儲存)chǔ cúnstockpile; to store
存款cún kuǎnto deposit money (in a bank etc); bank savings
存储 (存儲)cún chǔto store up; to stockpile
活动 (活動)huó dòngto exercise; to move about; to work out; shaky; unsteady; loose (tooth etc)
生活shēng huóto live; life

See also: Japanese symbol for “survive”.

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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