question about a few kanji

[Emi79]

Hey everyone. This is my first post here
So I've got the same story as a ton of other people, my friend went out and got a kanji tattoo and I don't think it means what he think it means. He got the characters for 力, 歹 and 改変.
He insists 歹 means wicked (as in he is a wicked person, in the bad-boy sense not the evil sense.) I searched all over the internet and in dictionaries, I don't see that as a translation anywhere. I see bad and wrong listed, but it doesnt seem to have the connotation that he thinks. So I'm just wondering what some more experienced folks have to say about that.
No matter what it means, it's a HORRIBLY done tattoo.
Another friend got a tattoo that she THINKS says angel.
I saw it and was like, oh no!!
It's: 仙
even grasping at straws, that wouldn't couldn't be angel could it? ... As far as I understand it means hermit. I looked it up on some Chinese sites just incase, but what I got from that is just a person from the mountains. Maybe implying that they are mystical (or wanting to be), but nothing beyond that. So... this is not anyway like an angel right?
... ANOTHER friend just got her tattoo last week. She thinks it says "life laugh love" but it says "star laugh love".
I really don't understand why people just pick stuff out of a tattoo book and trust that person to know.
Emi

 

[nice gaijin]

welcome to the boards.

And Congratulations!! your friends have joined the time-honored ranks of "people who got tattoos they can't read and don't understand"!! This less-than-exclusive club comes with a variety of perks, such as being branded for life in indecipherable, poorly written foreign characters, laughed at by people that CAN read them, and faced with either the choice of covering it up, laughing it up (oh, those youthful indiscretions, hahaha), or denying it altogether and clinging to the hope that no one will point out their foolishness.

while they are all indeed characters used in Japanese...

力 means strength, and is probably the MOST common kanji tattoo out there. Your friend isn't very original.

歹 does not have the connotation your friend thinks, and I haven't seen it used. "Wicked," like a bad boy is an English colloquialism, what made your friend think SLANG would translate well?

改変 means change, what does he think it means?

仙 is kind of like angel/fairy, but isn't really written by itself if that's what she was going for. It makes more sense if it's 仙女. Maybe she was looking more for 天使 or 天女

Let this be a lesson to you youngsters out there. Let your friends know that MY friends and I just had a good laugh at their expense.

 

[hkeinnrgy]

歹 does mean "wicked" in chinese in some situation. Maybe old japanese have the same meaning, i am not sure.
仙 the original meaning in chinese is "immortal"
just like nice gaijin said, it makes more sense when combined with other characters, "仙女" "仙子"

 

[Putrefaction]

力 means strength, and is probably the MOST common kanji tattoo out there. Your friend isn't very original.

I was actually contemplating getting 自力 in small black on my left bicep-shoulder area. :\

 

[FinancialWar]

get ur friend " 百人看不懂" on his chest, it means "power, love, truth, strength, honour".

lol white ppl are so cool