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The original sentence was

巨大な船体が海水を押しのけていく

巨大: huge
船体: hull; the body of ship/boat
押す: to press; to pree
のける=退ける: to push something away

I would like to know how to 押す and のける is combined together.
I am guessing the sentence means something like "the huge body of ship pushed the seawater away."

Thanks

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  • 2
    I'm guessing you're familiar with other compound verbs, like 付け加える or 繰り返す?
    – Leebo
    Oct 28, 2020 at 23:41
  • I know the meaning of both, but I don't know how they are compounded together
    – Jing
    Oct 28, 2020 at 23:53
  • So are you asking about the etymology and history of how these words became compounds? These aren't examples of words where you can "combine" them yourself.
    – Leebo
    Oct 28, 2020 at 23:56

1 Answer 1

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押しのける is a compound verb. There are thousands of compound verbs in Japanese, and all of them are constructed like V1 (masu-stem) + V2. I'm sure you have already seen many.

Some compound verbs have tricky meanings, but 押しのける is fairly simple. 押す means "to push", and のける here means "to put aside". The combined meaning is straightforwardly "to push aside". Still, this is something you have to learn almost as one word.

There is a good database called Compound Verb Lexicon.

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