"Air"
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
posted by tian at
3:47 PM
10 Comments:
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...
Not 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."
I 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.
The middle character could be a very badly drawn 汽 missing the water radical.
What 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.
Maybe the kana is actually a mirrored "に"?
I 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.
And 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.
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.
Clearly it means, "I am full of hot air."
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