<p>None of the existing answers are bad, but I want to add an alternate answer, becuase this is a tricky question.  Its very easy to list something that is old and not used or unknown meaning to any regular people.  There have even been characters in the past over a hundred strokes-- but if they were even real terms is questionable, certianly not ever true vocab.</p>
<p>So, I want to offer an alternative of actually used modern vocab that has many strokes, and an actually used in old texts big character.</p>
<p>modern use: 齉 is considered by many as the most strokes in a character actually used as normal vocab, a term for a stuffy nose you could use in any sentence ((although
you are way more likely to hear it said out loud than see it written down haha)).</p>
<p>ancient use: would be <a href="https://i.sstatic.net/jWz5M.jpg" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/jWz5M.jpg" alt="enter image description here" /></a>  image courtesy of chairman bao-- a character that wasn't believed to be widely used but has been defined to mean thief ((many big character contenders have no known meaning or use)).</p>
<p>there is no set answer here, since you can easily disqualify certain things to not count.  If you only want to count characters in regular education, you aren't gonna break the thirty stroke mark.  If you want to include character reduplication you will easily break 100.  I personally don't count reduplication, for the same reason if you said “really really really&quot; in english, I wouldn't count that as a different term from just saying really.  At least for the duplicate characters we know the meaning of, thats exactly it.  Still the original glyphs meaning, just.... duplicated two three four or more times.  Compare 木、林、森, very common modern characters in the same principle as those ancient glyphs of 龘 and so on. ((if others feel differently to each their own, it is a tricky question, chinese english or otherwise)).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-15T19:30:10.293Z
There are lots of duplicated characters that aren’t just a ‘repetition’ of the singular character. You could see 林 _lín_ ‘forest’ as a ‘repeated’ 木 _mù_ ‘tree’, but 森 _sēn_ ‘dark, dense, orderly, rigorous’ can hardly be considered as such, and 朋 _péng_ ‘friend’ is definitely neither ‘flesh flesh’ nor ‘moon moon’, and 品 _pǐn_ ‘article, product’ isn’t ‘mouth mouth mouth’.
Janus Bahs Jacquet
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-15T19:34:41.027Z
And even within characters that are in current – if not exactly _common_ – use, there is the 58-stroke [ _biáng_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles) (only recently Unicode-encoded, so probably [tofu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Availability)ed here) used in the name of the famous _biángbiang_ noodles.
Janus Bahs Jacquet
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-16T05:29:22.500Z
@JanusBahsJacquet  if you count biang thats a valid opinion, many people don't, the same way many people don't count supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as a real word in english-- even though its well known.  All characters have multiple meanings, even the gloomy or in close rows is still related directly to tree tree tree, product or item still related to three boxes.  maybe this article you will like https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E4%B8%89%E5%8F%A0%E5%AD%97
zagrycha
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-16T12:01:19.027Z
Yes, if you go deep enough, _all_ Chinese characters (not just the ones consisting of repeated individual characters) describe their meaning through some form of ideographic logic. That is, after all, the entire principle of the system. My point was that even if there is an underlying logic in reduplicated characters, they are not generally comparable to just repeating the word in English at all. Saying ‘tree tree’ does not in any way imply or mean ‘forest’ in English (just as saying 木木 would not be understood to mean 林 in Chinese).
Janus Bahs Jacquet
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-15T02:59:47.490Z
2024-02-15T02:59:47.490Z
zagrycha
<blockquote>
<p>Is 龘 a contender for &quot;character with the most strokes&quot;?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>no</h2>
<p>there’s a “unicoded” character u+2a6a5, composed by 4 <strong>dragons</strong> </p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/FEHMC.jpg" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/FEHMC.jpg" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>further, another “unicoded” character u+3106c is composed by 3 <strong>clouds</strong> “on top of” 3 <strong>dragons</strong> </p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/kxCr8.jpg" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/kxCr8.jpg" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>have fun :)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T13:22:44.433Z
I wouldn't consider this kind of "character" real.  It's just a made-up  jumble mumble
Tang Ho
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T13:24:16.360Z
I must be drawing it wrong, or I can't count! Or both! Sorry! Oh well, but it is near the top! 几条龙是一个队?
Pedroski
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T13:26:01.137Z
@TangHo, moi aussi lah, but the unicode consortium accepted these  and assigned code point 
水巷孑蠻
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T13:33:18.287Z
與其話係字，不如話係符好過啦，根本就係冇字搞字
Tang Ho
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T13:47:22.230Z
@TangHo, 真係冇字搞字，搞咗份 pdf：CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G Unicode block (U+30000-3134F)；一路睇一路鬧 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYs5Lb-qqEAxWqTmwGHVi0D-kQFnoECA8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Funicode.org%2Fcharts%2FPDF%2FU30000.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0T79mg1tA49Cy-20zs-QdX&opi=89978449
水巷孑蠻
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T11:26:07.933Z
2024-02-14T11:42:23.970Z
2024-02-14T11:42:23.970Z
水巷孑蠻
<p>Don't foget this guy:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1></h1>
</blockquote>
<p>But that's more Kanji than Hanzi...</p>
<hr />
<p>64 stroke Chinese character:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1></h1>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T15:07:19.297Z
I'll simplify that: 正
Pedroski
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T14:49:09.150Z
2024-02-14T14:49:09.150Z
Mou某
<p>龘 dá: 龘（读音为dá、ㄉㄚˊ [7]）是一个汉语汉字，部首为龍，“龖”的异体字 [8]，字义指龙飞的样子</p>
<p>I got this character in a WeChat New Year message. It has 3 x 17 strokes, I believe.</p>
<p>Even that made up biangbiangmian character only has 57 strokes, I believe, but this is a real character, I think!</p>
<p>齉 has only 36 strokes!</p>
<p>[<img src="https://i.sstatic.net/RNC6Y.png" alt="龖" /></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-14T11:30:19.713Z
btw, the dragon is a 16 strokes character, how come you get 17 strokes  https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk//Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=龍
水巷孑蠻
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-15T02:30:48.097Z
@水巷孑蠻  i think they are splitting the  on 月 in 龍into two
zagrycha
<characters>
Is 龘 a contender for "character with the most strokes"?
# Is 龘 a contender for "character with the most strokes"?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-02-14)

龘 dá: 龘（读音为dá、ㄉㄚˊ [7]）是一个汉语汉字，部首为龍，“龖”的异体字 [8]，字义指龙飞的样子

I got this character in a WeChat New Year message. It has 3 x 17 strokes, I believe.

Even that made up biangbiangmian character only has 57 strokes, I believe, but this is a real character, I think!

齉 has only 36 strokes!

[![龖](https://i.sstatic.net/RNC6Y.png)

**Tags:** characters

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: btw, the dragon is a 16 strokes character, how come you get 17 strokes  https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk//Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=龍  
> **username_2**: @username_1  i think they are splitting the  on 月 in 龍into two  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2024-02-15. Score: 7

None of the existing answers are bad, but I want to add an alternate answer, becuase this is a tricky question. Its very easy to list something that is old and not used or unknown meaning to any regular people. There have even been characters in the past over a hundred strokes-- but if they were even real terms is questionable, certianly not ever true vocab.

So, I want to offer an alternative of actually used modern vocab that has many strokes, and an actually used in old texts big character.

modern use: 齉 is considered by many as the most strokes in a character actually used as normal vocab, a term for a stuffy nose you could use in any sentence ((although
you are way more likely to hear it said out loud than see it written down haha)).

ancient use: would be [![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/jWz5M.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/jWz5M.jpg) image courtesy of chairman bao-- a character that wasn't believed to be widely used but has been defined to mean thief ((many big character contenders have no known meaning or use)).

there is no set answer here, since you can easily disqualify certain things to not count. If you only want to count characters in regular education, you aren't gonna break the thirty stroke mark. If you want to include character reduplication you will easily break 100. I personally don't count reduplication, for the same reason if you said “really really really" in english, I wouldn't count that as a different term from just saying really. At least for the duplicate characters we know the meaning of, thats exactly it. Still the original glyphs meaning, just.... duplicated two three four or more times. Compare 木、林、森, very common modern characters in the same principle as those ancient glyphs of 龘 and so on. ((if others feel differently to each their own, it is a tricky question, chinese english or otherwise)).

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: There are lots of duplicated characters that aren’t just a ‘repetition’ of the singular character. You could see 林 _lín_ ‘forest’ as a ‘repeated’ 木 _mù_ ‘tree’, but 森 _sēn_ ‘dark, dense, orderly, rigorous’ can hardly be considered as such, and 朋 _péng_ ‘friend’ is definitely neither ‘flesh flesh’ nor ‘moon moon’, and 品 _pǐn_ ‘article, product’ isn’t ‘mouth mouth mouth’.  
> **username_3**: And even within characters that are in current – if not exactly _common_ – use, there is the 58-stroke [ _biáng_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles) (only recently Unicode-encoded, so probably [tofu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Availability)ed here) used in the name of the famous _biángbiang_ noodles.  
> **username_2**: @username_3  if you count biang thats a valid opinion, many people don't, the same way many people don't count supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as a real word in english-- even though its well known.  All characters have multiple meanings, even the gloomy or in close rows is still related directly to tree tree tree, product or item still related to three boxes.  maybe this article you will like https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/%E4%B8%89%E5%8F%A0%E5%AD%97  
> **username_3**: Yes, if you go deep enough, _all_ Chinese characters (not just the ones consisting of repeated individual characters) describe their meaning through some form of ideographic logic. That is, after all, the entire principle of the system. My point was that even if there is an underlying logic in reduplicated characters, they are not generally comparable to just repeating the word in English at all. Saying ‘tree tree’ does not in any way imply or mean ‘forest’ in English (just as saying 木木 would not be understood to mean 林 in Chinese).  

---

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-02-14. Score: 6

> Is 龘 a contender for "character with the most strokes"?

## no

there’s a “unicoded” character u+2a6a5, composed by 4 **dragons**

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/FEHMC.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/FEHMC.jpg)

further, another “unicoded” character u+3106c is composed by 3 **clouds** “on top of” 3 **dragons**

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/kxCr8.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/kxCr8.jpg)

have fun :)

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: I wouldn't consider this kind of "character" real.  It's just a made-up  jumble mumble  
> **username_0**: I must be drawing it wrong, or I can't count! Or both! Sorry! Oh well, but it is near the top! 几条龙是一个队?  
> **username_1**: @username_4, moi aussi lah, but the unicode consortium accepted these  and assigned code point   
> **username_4**: 與其話係字，不如話係符好過啦，根本就係冇字搞字  
> **username_1**: @username_4, 真係冇字搞字，搞咗份 pdf：CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G Unicode block (U+30000-3134F)；一路睇一路鬧 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYs5Lb-qqEAxWqTmwGHVi0D-kQFnoECA8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Funicode.org%2Fcharts%2FPDF%2FU30000.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0T79mg1tA49Cy-20zs-QdX&opi=89978449  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2024-02-14. Score: 2

Don't foget this guy:

> #

But that's more Kanji than Hanzi...

---

64 stroke Chinese character:

> #

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I'll simplify that: 正  

---

