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I came across a sentence that doesn't make sense no matter how I try to break it up. The context is a person's reply to a question about cutting their hair.

切るタイミング逃しちゃっただけ。

I'm not 100% sure whether the や and つ are little or big from the handwriting, but I'm pretty sure the above is correct.

The first and last parts are easy.

切る タイミング ... だけ。

However, I'm not aware of any words that follow up a 逃 with し, so I suppose maybe it stands alone. In that case it's probably:

切る タイミング 逃 し ちゃった だけ。

However, I usually see し at the end of the sentence terminating a list.

(On a side note, I'm not sure how the English word is being used here either.)

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逃し is のがし from [逃]{のが}す. 逃しちゃった is a contraction of 逃してしまった. So this し is just okurigana, not a standalone particle.

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    逃し is the 連用形 of 逃す, also known as the masu-stem form
    – user11589
    Dec 21, 2015 at 21:56
  • @user11589: You are right, but that is not the case here. As I said, it's using a contraction of 〜てしまった, so we're dealing with the て形, not the 連用形.
    – istrasci
    Dec 21, 2015 at 22:00
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    In the Japanese grammar as is taught at school in Japan, both ます形 and て形 are considered to be two different forms of 連用形, because they were the same form in Classical Japanese. (This might be different from how the Japanese grammar is taught when people learn Japanese as a foreign language, though.) So you are right that the 逃し in 逃しちゃった is the て形 of 逃す, but you have to be careful when you say it is not 連用形.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Dec 22, 2015 at 0:55
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    タイミングを逃す is "miss the timing/opportunity". The sentence says "I just missed the timing to cut my hair."
    – naruto
    Dec 22, 2015 at 3:05
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    ^切る is modifying タイミング.
    – xeta217
    Dec 22, 2015 at 6:58

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