King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “utterance”

发言
fā yán
Traditional: 發言
to make a speech; statement; utterance; 个 (gè)

The closest CC-CEDICT match for utterance is 发言 (fā yán), defined as: to make a speech; statement; utterance; 个 (gè).

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

发 fā
to issue, to dispatch, to send out; hair
radical 29 ⼜ · 5 strokes
言 yán
words, speech; to speak, to say
radical 149 ⾔ · 7 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “utterance”

WordPinyinMeaning
话语 (話語)huà yǔwords; speech
言谈 (言談)yán tándiscourse; words

Related words

Other words that share a character with 发言.

WordPinyinMeaning
发展 (發展)fā zhǎndevelopment; growth
发生 (發生)fā shēngto happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises")
发现 (發現)fā xiànto notice; to become aware of; to discover; to find; to detect
开发 (開發)kāi fāto exploit (a resource); to open up (for development); to develop
发布 (發佈)fā bùvariant of 发布 (fā bù)
语言 (語言)yǔ yánlanguage; 门 (mén),种 (zhǒng)
而言ér yán(typically preceded by 就… (jiù xx) or 对… (duì xx) etc) as far as ... is concerned; speaking in terms of ...
言论 (言論)yán lùnexpression of opinion; views

See also: Japanese symbol for “utterance”.

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.