King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “wormwood”

苦艾
kǔ ài
wormwood; Artemisia absinthium

The closest CC-CEDICT match for wormwood is 苦艾 (kǔ ài), defined as: wormwood; Artemisia absinthium.

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

苦 kǔ
bitter; hardship, suffering
radical 140 ⾋ · 9 strokes
艾 ài
mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris; used in transliterations
radical 140 ⾋ · 6 strokes

Related words

Other words that share a character with 苦艾.

WordPinyinMeaning
痛苦tòng kǔpain; suffering
辛苦xīn kǔexhausting; hard
苦难 (苦難)kǔ nànsuffering
艰苦 (艱苦)jiān kǔdifficult; hard
苦恼 (苦惱)kǔ nǎovexed; distressed
受苦shòu kǔto suffer hardship
艾滋病ài zī bìng(loanword) AIDS
方兴未艾 (方興未艾)fāng xīng wèi àiflourishing and still in the ascendant (idiom); rapidly expanding; still growing strong

See also: Japanese symbol for “wormwood”.

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.