cunning

狡

ㄐㄧㄠˇ jiǎo

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

Cleverness used to outmanoeuvre someone — admired in English, almost always an insult in Chinese.

Before you commit

Choose with care狡 is not a compliment. 狡猾 means sly and untrustworthy, and the dog radical adds to that. If you mean clever rather than devious, choose 機智 or 智謀.

Pairs well with機智 for quick wit, 謀略 for strategic cleverness, 足智多謀 for a resourceful mind.

Cultural noteThe idiom 狡兔三窟, the wily rabbit keeps three burrows, is glossed plainly as having several hiding places or several lines of retreat, and in its source story it is advice offered approvingly. The disapproval sits in 狡 by itself, which means sly and nothing else.

Meaning

Sly, crafty, foxlike.

The plainest character for cunning, and firmly negative in every ordinary use.

Other characters for “cunning”

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