知
Symbols Mind
knowledge
ㄓ zhī
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.
What a person has come to know. Chinese distinguishes knowing a fact from recognising a thing when you meet it.
Before you commit
Choose with care知 is a verb first. Alone it reads as to know rather than as knowledge, which can look unfinished standing by itself.
Pairs well with知足, knowing when you have enough, is a well-loved phrase and a far richer tattoo than 知 on its own.
At small sizesEight strokes, arrow beside mouth, wide and open. One of the safest characters at small size or on a curve.
Meaning
To know; awareness of how something stands.
The plain verb, and the base of nearly every word about knowing.
Other characters for “knowledge”
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