rest in peace

Choose with careIn modern Chinese 安息 is said only of the dead; to a living person it lands as a curse or a very dark joke. The dictionaries do record an older sense — simply to rest, as when a general is told to take off his armour and 安息 in the Three Kingdoms — but that use is classical and gone from everyday speech. Nobody will read it as ordinary rest.

At small sizesSixteen strokes across two open, balanced characters. It scales down cleanly for a two-character piece.

Cultural noteAcross the Taiwanese and Hong Kong funeral-flower trade, every set phrase containing 安息 — 安息主懷, 主懷安息 — is filed under the Christian heading. We checked three independent suppliers; none of them puts it under the male, female, or Buddhist lists. Buddhist funerals use 往生淨土, 花開見佛, 功德圓滿, 乘願再來 instead; traditional non-religious ones use 道範長存 or 駕鶴西歸 for a man, 母儀千古 or 懿德長昭 for a woman. Catholic headstones tend to carry 息止安所, the Chinese for R.I.P. And 安息日 is the Sabbath — Taiwan has a Seventh-day Adventist conference and hospital by that name. The religious pull on this word runs deep.