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On the train yesterday, I came across this ad, which is just for some mascara or whatever:

mascara ad

Sorry it's a little blurry. The text is 凛{りん}と際立{きわだ}つ艶ロング。

I'm just a little unclear on a couple of things.

For the first kanji, 凛{りん}, my dictionaries say it means "cold", but I can't see how that connects to mascara. Is that the right meaning?

The other question is on the last kanji, 艶. Is it read つや or えん? The different readings seem to have different meanings, but they could both apply. つや is "gloss, glaze, charm" and other meanings, while えん is "charming, fascinating". Which is it?

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I wonder if the dual-meaning is a play on words type of thing... – silvermaple Dec 31 '11 at 6:09

1 Answer

up vote 4 down vote accepted

First of all I think it's usually written as 凛{りん}と rather than 凛{りん}, meaning "dignified".

Secondly I think it's most likely 艶{つや} as in つやつや "glossy/shiny" as I've often seen つやつやとした in reference to shiny hair, and つやロング gets lots of relevant search results but えんロング doesn't seem to.

凛{りん}と際{きわ}立{だ}つ艶{つや}ロング
"Glossy long (eyelashes) that stand out dignified."

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I swear on all that is good and holy that before when I looked up 凛 I got just "cold", and now after seeing your answer, when I look it up, I'm seeing "cold, frigid, bracing, dignified". I don't know what happened there. Also: it never occured to me to do as you did, which was Google the phrases and see which got more hits and is more likely to be the common reading. I now have a new tool in my study. Nice. So thanks for that, too :) – Dave M G Dec 31 '11 at 9:10
@DaveMG No worries :) – cypher Dec 31 '11 at 9:40
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Good explanation of the terms asked for in the question, but the translation at the end is a bit shaky. 艶ロング is a noun referencing the eyelashes in a descriptive way, and 凛と際立つ is modifying that noun, not serving as an imperative. (Also, I believe 艶ロング more normally refers to hair -- note that ロング can be short for ロングヘア, see also 艶髪ロング -- and so I would guess that the point is using a term that would normally reference shiny long hair to describe eyelashes instead, to create some kind of visual impression / comparison. The gloss of long hair is easily imagined and translated to eyelashes.) – Hyperworm Dec 31 '11 at 10:42
@Hyperworm Thanks for the explanation! I was thinking that might be the case, but I wasn't sure how it could be translated. I think it's because "eyelashes" is implied rather than explicit. For now I've changed it to "Glossy long (eyelashes) that stand out dignified." – cypher Dec 31 '11 at 10:58

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