boredom

悶

ㄇㄣˋ mèn

Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.

Script

Characters

Layout

Nothing to do and nothing worth doing — flat time with a faint pressure behind it.

Before you commit

Choose with care悶 mixes stuffy air, low mood and boredom in one character, and it leans towards depression rather than idleness. Plain boredom is 無聊.

At small sizes12 strokes with a heart enclosed by the gate radical. The interior fills in quickly when small.

Cultural note無聊 is also used of behaviour. Calling someone 無聊 says what they are doing is pointless and tiresome, not that they have nothing to do.

Meaning

Stifled, stuffy, low; bored and shut in.

A heart behind a closed door — the picture is airless, not merely idle.

Other characters for “boredom”

What to do next

Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.

Related concepts