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I was scrolling twitter and saw this word that I've never seen before. These kanji together do not compose a word that makes sense to me, at least.

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  • Did you look up 本家?
    – naruto
    Jul 20, 2021 at 1:36
  • Some context would help, too. There's a dictionary definition, but it's not one that will necessarily make sense in some of its uses, especially on a place like Twitter.
    – ConMan
    Jul 20, 2021 at 2:39

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The prefix ご and the suffix 様{さま} are used in honorific speech, to speak in a respectful manner regarding someone or something. Here are some more examples of the usage of honorific prefixes.

As naruto mentioned in the comments on your question, 本家{ほんけ} is the word that's being mentioned respectfully. Looking around on Twitter, the word is used in slang to mean the original as naruto pointed out in a comment on this answer. As you can see from the results, it's mostly people uploading edits or remakes of vocaloid clips and giving credit to the original songs.

The use of honorifics is likely to show respect to the creators of various vocaloid songs.

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    Further research required? A simple dictionary search would have told you the correct reading for 本家.
    – jogloran
    Jul 20, 2021 at 21:39
  • @jogloran I believe they're saying "further research required to see if there's an etymological connection between this 家 and the 家 in 作曲家 despite the fact that they are pronounced differently."
    – Leebo
    Jul 21, 2021 at 0:04
  • @jogloran I'm not sure about the pronunciation of the word if it might be based on the word for musician or creator, as opposed to the standard pronunciation of 本家 which might be unrelated to the slang meaning of this term.
    – JansthcirlU
    Jul 21, 2021 at 1:10
  • It's read ほんけ because it's the same word. It's originally a word that refers to family (hence け), but it can slangily refer to "the original" in general. The か reading, meaning "-er; -cian; -ist", is not related to this. In standard formal Japanese, 本家 doesn't take 様 because it doesn't refer to a human in the first place.
    – naruto
    Jul 21, 2021 at 2:14
  • @naruto awesome, thanks for that clarification! I wonder if there's an explanation for why 様 is used for something that's clearly not a human
    – JansthcirlU
    Jul 21, 2021 at 10:53

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