Chinese symbol for “vegetable”
菜
cài
vegetable; greens (CL:棵 (kē)); dish (of food) (样 (yàng),道 (dào),盘 (pán)); (of one's skills etc) weak; poor; (coll.) (one's) type
The closest CC-CEDICT match for vegetable is 菜 (cài), defined as: vegetable; greens (CL:棵 (kē)); dish (of food) (样 (yàng),道 (dào),盘 (pán)); (of one's skills etc) weak; poor; (coll.) (one's) type.
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
Related words
Other words that share a character with 菜.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 蔬菜 | shū cài | vegetables |
| 菜单 (菜單) | cài dān | menu; measure word: 份 (fèn), 张 (zhāng) |
| 菜肴 (菜餚) | cài yáo | vegetable and meat dishes; dish |
| 菠菜 | bō cài | spinach (CL:棵 (kē)); (slang) gambling; gambler (alternative term for 博彩 (bó cǎi)) |
| 白菜 | bái cài | Chinese cabbage, esp. napa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis); sometimes used to refer to bok choy (Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis) |
| 菜鸟 (菜鳥) | cài niǎo | (coll.) sb new to a particular subject; rookie |
See also: Japanese symbol for “vegetable”.
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.