Small red lettering tattoo of a short phonetically spelled word on the lower back, above dark camouflage leggings.

Small red word tattoo on the lower back

Lettering · Back · Colour · Photo

A close photograph of a small tattoo of a short word set in red lettering with hyphens between the syllables, sitting on the lower back or hip area. The letters are a clean sans-serif with even, solid fill and no shading. The skin is shown against a dark indoor background with blurred lights, and the wearer's dark camouflage leggings sit below the tattoo.

Lettering Back Word Lettering Text

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had checked three dictionaries, a gazetteer and the old Hull trawler log before she admitted the word wasn't in any of them. It sat on the proof sheet in the grey type the printers used for captions, hyphenated like something that had to be carried in pieces. Isa-ne-tei. Her editor wanted it spelled and stressed by Friday, with a note on where it came from, and Ruth had nothing to write but the name of the man who had sent it in.

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Harold Pyle had been a deckhand on the Brightwater for thirty-one years and had died in March with his papers in a biscuit tin. His niece posted the tin to the office in a padded envelope, and inside, on the back of a tide table, was a list of words in capitals. Most were ordinary: dogger, gannet, lee. The last was the one in question, and beside it Harold had written, in pencil pressed hard enough to dent the card, say it slow, like you're counting the lines.

So Ruth said it slow, alone in the office with the radiator ticking. Isa. Ne. Tei. Each piece landed on its own, the way a rope takes weight in stages when a boat comes alongside. She tried it fast and it fell apart, which she supposed was the point of the hyphens. Harold hadn't been asking for a definition. He had been giving her a way to hold on.

She wrote the entry at last. Pronunciation: three breaths, one to each part. Meaning: the moment a crew knows the weather will hold. Origin: unknown, probably Harold's own. Then she crossed out probably and left the rest as it was.