幽
Symbols Virtues
humor
默
ㄧㄡ ㄇㄛˋ yōu mò
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
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Wit that lightens a room — in Chinese, a modern imported idea rather than an ancient virtue.
Before you commit
Choose with care幽默 is a sound-loan of the English word humour, coined in the 1920s by Lin Yutang. It looks classical but is modern, and 幽 alone means dim or secluded.
Pairs well with幽默感 for a sense of humour, 風趣 for a witty and engaging person.
At small sizesBoth characters are dense — 默 alone has sixteen strokes over a black radical. This pair needs size or it turns into two dark squares.
Meaning
Humour; a light, witty way of handling things.
The standard word, and the only one an ordinary reader will take as humour.
Other characters for “humor”
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