Monday, February 14, 2011

from: Nick
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:56 AM
subject: unknown calf

Hi there,

My brother got this tattoo on his calf many years ago, has no idea what it means.

Can you help????

Thanks, Love the blog.

Nick



First of all, the character is not correct. It is either missing a stroke in the left radical or having one extra. The intended character could be:

枠 means "frame; spindle, spool, reel".

or,

粋 means "pure".
at

5 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2011 at 7:27 PM

    I think there is not a necessary dot in left radical.
    "粋" means stylishness or something.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2011 at 8:29 PM

    Actually the intention might have been 粋 iki, which in Japanese is a slightly old-fashioned word for "cool" in the current English slang sense.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2011 at 1:01 AM

    More than likely, the intended character is 粋. At least in Japanese, it means chic, stylish, refined etc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2011 at 10:39 PM

    With the way the crosses looked, I thought it meant 殺, to kill, made to look like 粋, the Japanese written variant of 粹 in Chinese, here, written incorrectly as 枠.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMay 27, 2011 at 5:41 AM

    I say he gets points for a fairly artistic rendition, though. I wouldn't be ashamed of this tattoo if it were corrected to add the extra dot to the rice-hen.

    ReplyDelete