摯
Symbols Relationships
best friend
友
ㄓˋ ㄧㄡˇ zhì yǒu
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 closest friend you have. Chinese has no single character for it, and each of the natural words says something slightly different.
Before you commit
Choose with careNo single character means best friend, so anything shorter than two characters will not say it. 摯友 is written rather than spoken and can feel formal in the mouth.
Pairs well with知己 if what you value is being understood, 摯友 if you want the plain fact of a deep friendship stated with weight.
At small sizes摯 alone is fifteen strokes and top-heavy. The pair needs real width; below a few centimetres the upper block fills in.
Meaning
Close, sincere friend; a friend one holds to.
The written word for a deep friendship, dignified without being cold.
Other characters for “best friend”
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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