Need to know the meaning

[Bash]

Hi,

I need to know the meaning of the attached tattoo?

[Bash]

Please can anyone tell me what this tattoo means? I am getting two different answers!!

[aone]

something like 鱼（FISH）.

[Lu]

Do you have a better picture? This one is very grainy and doesn't show the entire tattoo well. It might be something like fish, as aone says, but there seem to be some more strokes.

[Bash]

Thanks for both of you. I think this is more clearer picture.

[Shelley]

Could it possibly be dao 道 meaning way and supposed to be for The Way and Daoism/Taoism?

[Demonic_Duck]

Looks more like 焦 (burnt) to me.

[Shelley]

Its really hard to tell from the picture, it would good if there was a better picture.

[Demonic_Duck]

I'm not sure a high resolution blob will suddenly become much more obviously recognisable as a Chinese character than a low resolution blob.

[Lu]

Well, half the character not being obscured by a shadow might help with recognition.

[imron]

(merged) see post #2 for a new picture.

 

@bash, please try to keep things all in the same place.

[OneEye]

It's 煞 backwards. Hopefully the picture is mirrored and not the tattoo itself. It means "evil spirit" or "to kill."

[MPhillips]

That's what you get for going to a tattoo parlor called "Leonardo's"!

[Shelley]

The bottom doesn't look like 4 little dian, it looks more like one line, or is it just so badly blurred they have merged into one, or is it the photo?

[OneEye]

In quick writing/行書/草書, the four dots get connected. That's the reason characters like 魚 or 馬 ended up with a line at the bottom in simplified Chinese: 鱼、马.

[Shelley]

Thank you OneEye, makes sense.

 

So is the whole character simplified or is some weird mixture of both?

[OneEye]

Neither. It's just in a handwritten/行書 style.

[Shelley]

Oh ok Thanks.

[MPhillips]

Hey OneEye, you're amazing! So as I'm too lazy to look it up for myself, which is preferable 煞車 or 剎車？

[OneEye]

I think 煞車 is more commonly used, but then again I've never driven in Chinese before.

 

That's actually an interesting question though. 殺 and 煞, believe it or not, both evolved from the same small seal (小篆) form. 煞 is a weird corruption, and 殺 just happened to also survive, so now we have two characters where there was originally only one.