rare

稀

ㄒㄧ xī

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

Seldom found. Chinese has two plain characters for scarcity and one that adds the idea of being worth having.

Before you commit

Choose with care稀 also means watery or diluted - 稀飯 is rice porridge and 稀釋 is to dilute. Alone it can read as thin rather than as rare.

Pairs well with稀有 for scarce, 珍稀 for rare and precious. The second is what conservation writing uses for rare species.

At small sizesTwelve strokes with a grain radical on the left. Even and open, and it behaves well small.

Meaning

Rare, sparse, thinly spread; also dilute.

Scarcity as thinness on the ground - few and far between.

Other characters for “rare”

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.

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