Understanding the usage of だらけ

Question

I've come across this in the following sentence:

油断だらけのこの背中

油断 means "reckless" or "negligence" and だらけ means "full of" or "riddle with". While I can decipher(?) the meaning of the sentence as a whole to mean "This back full of openings" or something like but I can't fathom the meaning of the combination 油断だらけ.

Is it simply "Riddled with negligence"? Can I use だらけ with other words like 穴 to say that something is riddle with holes or 虫刺されだらけ to say that something is riddle with bites from insects?

Thanks

Answer 1

As far as the literal translation goes, yes, it is simply "this back riddled with negligence". Grammatically, -だらけ is a suffix that forms a no-adjective. Like "riddled with ～", "～だらけ" is used with many undesirable (and usually countable) things, like so:

• 欠点だらけの人
• 傷だらけの顔
• この文章は漢字の間違いだらけだ。
• 穴だらけのセキュリティー

A 背中 doesn't "have" 油断, and 油断 is not really countable, so 油断だらけの背中 sounds like a little poetic/literary expression to me.

On the other hand, these are incorrect:

• ^❌水だらけのプール (say 水でいっぱいのプール instead)
• ^❌笑顔だらけの顔 (say 笑顔でいっぱいの顔 instead)