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So I was trying to translate this song (full lyrics here) but there's this one line that I can't make sense out of.

その餌で凍えて誂えて　この折に巣食い尽くす　この唄を　捧げます。

With that bait, freeze and make to order. Completely building a nest in this opportunity, I dedicate this song.

I'm unsure what to do with 巣食い尽くす, for one thing. Should it be 巣(を)食い尽くす, or is it like that 尽くす is the ending on the verb stem 巣食い, as I have it translated above? I'm thinking this is probably a pun.

As for the first part... I'm unsure exactly what it means? Grammatically it works but the で is throwing me off - if it were を, that would make sense, freezing and ordering are both things one does with food. But I'm not sure how the で would work here?

Thanks so much for your help!

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There are various misses in your proposed translation.

  • 餌【え】 could also be just "food for an animal".
  • 凍【こご】える is an intransitive verb with a meaning more like "to become frozen and numb from cold".
  • 誂【あつら】える is not "to make something to order", but more like "to request or order that something be done or made as one wants". It's about getting someone else to do the doing / making.
  • すくいつくす might be a pun, depending on how we parse the sounds. 巣食い尽くす as written would equate to 巣【す】を食【く】い尽【つ】くす, or "completely eat (a/the) nest".
    The sounds could also be spelled as 救い尽くす or 掬い尽くす. However, this would be a weird collocation, since 救【すく】う means "to rescue" and 掬【すく】う means "to scoop up", while 尽【つ】くす means "to do something completely so nothing is left, to exhaust something", which is a strange kind of collocation for "rescue", but I suppose it could work for "scoop", with a meaning like "to completely scoop something up (so nothing is left)".
    I have no idea where you're getting the "building" part. The base meaning of 食【く】う is "to eat something; to bite into something".

Reading briefly through the lyrics, I find it to be a bit of a weird song, and I can't claim to understand it very well. I also note what seem to be mistakes in the romanization, such as the sixth line in the third stanza:

せめて　その目でその肢でその声で semete sono me de sono shi de sono koe de

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the bolded kanji there should be read as e ("limb of the body"), not shi. A reading of e would fit the meter and rhyme better. That said, I haven't listened to the song, so I'm unsure of what's actually in the audio.

At any rate, I hope the above helps in some small way. Please comment with any further questions and I can edit the post.

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  • With the building part, 巣食う itself is a verb which means, "to build (a nest)". I thought perhaps 尽くす was attaching to the masu stem of that verb. Or perhaps it means both completely build and eat the nest, which is where I thought the pun was. Thanks for your help though.
    – Smoothie
    Commented Jun 6, 2020 at 15:48
  • @Smoothie: Thank you for the pointer! I’ve never encountered that word before. こちらこそ勉強【べんきょう】になりました。 ^_^ I’ll update the post later — currently away from my desk and on mobile, which isn’t a great interface for long-form editing.
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Jun 6, 2020 at 16:57
  • 1
    Given 巣食う's other meanings, I feel like the actual construction of a physical nest isn't really what the word conveys; more like making something your nest or home (for people, it can apparently mean that you settle into a place/make it your "haunt").
    – Micah Cowan
    Commented Jun 7, 2020 at 0:54

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