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In my flashcard studying of JLPT1 vocabulary I've across お負け with three English definitions (from JMdict):

  1. freebie,
  2. price reduction,
  3. exaggeration.

Now my question is how adding an honorific prefix to 負け (loss, defeat) has come to mean something positive (well, at least for the receiver). Is it because someone concedes something to someone else? E.g. a salesperson conceding a customer a reduction in price.

And what about the third definition, exaggeration, which seems unrelated the first two? As JMdict does not provide a sample sentence for this definition I'd be grateful if someone could provide one.

よろしくお願いします。

N.B. I am unfamiliar with the tags of the site, so moderators are free to add additional ones.

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  • Nice question! I've also pondered this one. My guess would be that the "seller" is taking a "loss" in the transaction.
    – Leo
    Jun 30, 2016 at 6:06

2 Answers 2

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Leo's guess is actually right. For reference, it is enough to go on the wikipedia page of お負け.

The meaning originally comes indeed from the fact that the seller is losing something in the bargaining process (from wiki):

おまけの語源は「御負け」の文字通り、店員が客との駆け引きに負けて値を下げる行為を指す言葉であったが、のちに商品以外の物品を追加する行為なども言うようになった.

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  • Simple as that. Cheers!
    – matshell
    Jun 30, 2016 at 7:45
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I can't think of any straightforward uses for お負け as "exaggeration", but it could be used like this:

彼の話にはいつもなんらかのお負けが付いている

"There's always a little something more to his stories" 

This might imply an exaggeration...

Sidenote: おまけ can also mean menstrual cycle

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  • おまけ can also mean menstrual cycle ← 初耳です。最近の新しい俗語的な用法でしょうか。
    – chocolate
    Jun 30, 2016 at 7:10
  • 女房詞だそうです。。。weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%8A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%91
    – sazarando
    Jun 30, 2016 at 7:19
  • 2
    室町時代(500年以上前)の俗語…w
    – naruto
    Jun 30, 2016 at 8:16
  • 時代劇に出てくることはあるかな?
    – sazarando
    Jun 30, 2016 at 8:18
  • 1
    いやー、出てこないと思います。たぶんほとんど誰も知らないので…
    – naruto
    Jun 30, 2016 at 10:31

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