Chinese symbol for “unfamiliar”
生疏
shēng shū
unfamiliar; strange; out of practice; not accustomed
The closest CC-CEDICT match for unfamiliar is 生疏 (shēng shū), defined as: unfamiliar; strange; out of practice; not accustomed.
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
Other Chinese words for “unfamiliar”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 陌生 | mò shēng | strange; unfamiliar |
| 生 | shēng | to grow; to give birth; to produce; to be born; to arise; to occur |
| 生僻 | shēng pì | unfamiliar; rarely seen |
| 眼生 | yǎn shēng | unfamiliar; strange-looking |
| 冷僻 | lěng pì | out-of-the-way; deserted |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 生疏.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 生产 (生產) | shēng chǎn | to produce; to manufacture; to give birth to a child |
| 产生 (產生) | chǎn shēng | to arise; to come into being; to come about; to give rise to; to bring into being; to bring about; to produce; to engender; to generate |
| 先生 | xiān sheng | teacher; gentleman; sir; mister (Mr.) |
| 疏散 | shū sǎn | idle; leisurely; laid-back; Taiwan pr. [shu1san4] |
| 疏忽 | shū hu | to neglect; to overlook |
See also: Japanese symbol for “unfamiliar”.
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.