http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A50523/high/bmegl068697.jpg
The top character 空 is correct and means "empty, hollow, bare, deserted". The center character appears to be a Japanese katakana, may be either シ or ツ. The bottom character is incorrectly written 氣 or 気, which means "air, gas, steam, vapor; spirit".
空氣 (空気) = air; atmosphere
In EDICT I came up with 「空しい(P); 【むなしい】 (adj) vacant; futile; vain; void; empty; ineffective; lifeless」 and: 「気 【げ】 (suf) (uk) seeming; giving the appearance of; giving one the feeling of」, and that thing in the middle looks like a シ to me...
ReplyDeleteNot that 空シ気 is an actual word as far as I know (it doesn't seem like one to me), but I can see the logic...
Japanese Kanji have multiple pronunciations. In this case, the compound formed by the first and last characters on the tattoo forms "kuuki," meaning "air" or "atmosphere."
ReplyDeleteI don't know what's up with the middle character either, unless they were trying to be cute and modify the compound with a small "tsu" to approximate "cookie." Doesn't make the least bit of sense, but it hasn't stopped most of these people.
I just wonder that the middle could be a gross miswriting of 手, which would make 空手 (karate, the martial art). I doubt it, though.
ReplyDeleteThe middle character could be a very badly drawn 汽 missing the water radical.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be meant by 空汽気 is quite beyond me, however.
I hate to rehash past battles, but from the direction of the first two strokes of the middle character, that couldn't be ツ. I still think that these mystery シs are really the water radical. This particular case is weird because it could be a Japanese word if it is シ, but why in the world would they use Katakana? And the third character looks more like 氣 to me, meaning this probably isn't Japanese at all.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the kana is actually a mirrored "に"?
ReplyDeleteI don't know Japanese that well, but "空に気" seems to be a valid phrase, at least according to Google.
Another reason the middle character is probably not シ: The third stroke convex-up, not convex-down.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, it's certainly not に. Just because you find hits on Google for 空に気 doesn't mean that's a valid phrase on its own. Every hit shows that as part of a larger phrase, like 空に気をつける or 空に気をとられる.
Oh and I forgot to clarify earlier that 空し気 is a valid word, meaning "a feeling of emptiness." But it makes no sense for し to be in Katakana, and for all the reasons I've already given, it's probably the water radical.
When I first saw it, I thought the second character was a very badly written 可... Of course, it still doesn't make any sense.
ReplyDelete空シ氣 should make sense as an archaic form. Hiragana and katakana have been interchangable and/or switched places through the ages, and that corresponds to the suspect traditional 氣 as opposed to the modern 気.
ReplyDeleteClearly it means, "I am full of hot air."
ReplyDelete