麻
Symbols Emotions
numbness
木
ㄇㄚˊ ㄇㄨˋ má mù
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.
Feeling nothing where feeling should be — a dead limb, or a person who has stopped reacting.
Before you commit
Choose with care麻 alone reads as hemp or as the numbing tingle of a foot gone to sleep, not as emotional numbness. That sense needs both characters.
At small sizes11 plus 4 strokes, badly matched in weight. The pair looks lopsided unless you set them with care.
Cultural note麻木 is close to an accusation. 麻木不仁 describes someone indifferent to other people's suffering, and readers will hear that echo.
Meaning
Numb; unfeeling, deadened to what happens.
Covers the dead limb and the dead heart in one word.
Other characters for “numbness”
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