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I'm trying to interpret the sentence

笑みを交わしてのひらを重ね信じる

The part that's giving me trouble is 重ね信じる, which is a compound verb that I haven't seen before.

重ね, as the stem form of 重ねる, means a pile or heap of something, while 重ねる means to stack, overlay, or repeat something. I came across this post that gives different answers for the definition, so now I'm more confused on how to read 重ね信じる.

Could it mean to believe in stacking something?

Thanks for the help.

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  • Any chance you've got a typo in your sample sentence? And could you provide any additional context?
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Dec 21, 2022 at 19:58
  • This is the full sentence: 予感の声聞くよりも そう、笑みを交わしてのひらを重ね信じる
    – A.T.A.
    Commented Dec 21, 2022 at 20:30

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It's parsed [笑みを交わし][てのひらを重ね][信じる].

That て should be 手. Strange that 手 isn't in kanji here; it's a basic kanji and using て really blends it into the previous word, and I misread it the first couple times through.

Anyway, 重ね here is a transitive verb with 手のひら being the object being stacked. I read this as a fancy way to say "hold hands".

Maybe with some poetic license, I'd translate it to something like:

Smile at each other, put my hand in yours and believe.

*I suspect that was someone typing out the line and forgot to convert the kanji. Does the original song have this as well?

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  • Yes. Here are the full lyrics on the FF Fandom: Yuna's Ballad
    – A.T.A.
    Commented Dec 21, 2022 at 23:04
  • @A.T.A. Ah OK. It must be some sort of stylistic choice, but at least there is a space after 交わし to help readers parse the sentence correctly.
    – Jimmy
    Commented Dec 22, 2022 at 0:37
  • Can てのひらを重ね信じる be translated as something like, "We smile at each other, while I believe in putting our palms together"? It makes sense as putting one thing on another is basically like putting them together.
    – A.T.A.
    Commented Dec 23, 2022 at 22:39
  • @A.T.A. That would have to be something like 手のひらを重ねることを信じる. I don't see any other way of reading 重ね信じる as "stack, and believe".
    – Jimmy
    Commented Dec 24, 2022 at 4:47
  • Wouldn't reading it like that be the same as 重ねて信じる?
    – A.T.A.
    Commented Dec 24, 2022 at 14:44

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