赤 is generally understood as meaning 'red' (which can explain combinations like 赤子 (red face of a crying baby)). However, I have seen some words with 赤 that have a negative meaning, 赤 possibly increasing this connotation. 赤裸裸 (blunt, frankness (赤裸 being nudity in Chinese)), 赤貧 meaning extreme poverty, 赤口 (赤日?) being one of the unlucky days in Rokuyo (lucky and unlucky weekdays in simple), meaning 'Evil day'. Why does 赤 appear in such morbid and negative words? Is 赤 simply 当て字 or does it have any meaning or semantic reason for being in words like these? Is it 虫 where the common understanding of the word (in the case of 虫 it would be 'bug') has a connection to the negative meaning, if this is the same for 赤 then how is it connected to the negative meaning?
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I do not know that much about Japanese kanji, but in Chinese 赤 has the second meaning of "bare, exposed". 赤貧 thus probably means "with totally nothing". |
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赤{あか}の他人{たにん}- "a complete stranger,爪{つめ}のあか- "the dirt under one's fingernails", and you can sayあかを落{お}とすto mean "to scrub oneself clean", which seems to me to mean that赤has more negative dimensions than just "bare" and "exposed" (as in Eric's helpful answer below). It seems to also imply "dirty" and "unfamiliar", at least as far as I understand it. – Dave M G Feb 15 at 4:41虫{むし}, just since you mentioned it. – Dave M G Feb 15 at 4:43赤字{あかじ}is directly equivalent to in English when a company is "in the red" when they are in debt. Plus, when a company is "in the black", to be profitable, you can say黒字{くろじ}in Japanese, exactly as in English. I don't know if this is a result of crossover from English or coincidence, but I think they are both drawn from how old fashioned account ledgers used to use red to denote negative balances. So I'm not sure赤字{あかじ}has the same origins as the examples Koasamitsu offers in his question. – Dave M G Feb 15 at 4:52