崇
Symbols Beauty
sublime
高
ㄔㄨㄥˊ ㄍㄠ chóng gāo
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.
The awe that greatness produces. Chinese has no word for the aesthetic sublime, and translators borrow one meaning lofty.
Before you commit
Choose with careChinese has no equivalent of the sublime as an aesthetic category. 崇高 is the translator's word, and in ordinary speech it means noble - said of ideals, not of mountains.
At small sizesTwenty-one strokes over two tall characters. The mountain radical on top stays clear; the middle of 崇 does not.
Cultural noteWhere English reaches for the sublime, classical Chinese aesthetics reaches for 意境, the atmosphere a work opens up. There is no one-character version of that either.
Meaning
Lofty, noble, elevated; the term used to translate sublime.
In daily use it describes ideals and character, not landscapes.
Other characters for “sublime”
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