刺
Symbols Protection
assassin
客
ㄘˋ ㄎㄜˋ cì kè
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.
A killer sent for one named target. Chinese has a precise word for it and a long literary tradition treating such figures as tragic heroes.
Before you commit
Choose with care刺 on its own means to stab or a thorn. The assassin sense only arrives with the second character, so a single-character version does not work here.
At small sizesTwo characters of moderate density. Legible small, though the vertical knife element on the right of 刺 can thicken into a blur.
Cultural noteClassical Chinese history gives assassins their own biographies, and treats several as men of honour who repaid a debt with their lives. The word carries that weight.
Meaning
An assassin; one who kills a specific target, often for a cause.
The exact word, and the title of a famous chapter of the Records of the Grand Historian.
Other characters for “assassin”
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