Chinese symbol for “truism”
老生常谈
lǎo shēng cháng tán
Traditional: 老生常談
an old observation (idiom); a truism; banal comments
The closest CC-CEDICT match for truism is 老生常谈 (lǎo shēng cháng tán), defined as: an old observation (idiom); a truism; banal comments.
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
Other Chinese words for “truism”
Related words
Other words that share a character with 老生常谈.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 老师 (老師) | lǎo shī | teacher |
| 老婆 | lǎo pó | (coll.) wife |
| 老板 | lǎo bǎn | variant of 老板 (lǎo bǎn) |
| 老人 | lǎo rén | old man or woman; the elderly |
| 老公 | lǎo gōng | (coll.) husband |
| 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") |
| 生活 | shēng huó | to live; life |
| 学生 (學生) | xué sheng | student; schoolchild |
| 非常 | fēi cháng | very; really; unusual; extraordinary |
| 谈判 (談判) | tán pàn | to negotiate; negotiation |
See also: Japanese symbol for “truism”.
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.