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.
1 Answer
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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1Further research required? A simple dictionary search would have told you the correct reading for 本家.– jogloranJul 20, 2021 at 21:39
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@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."– LeeboJul 21, 2021 at 0:04
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@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. Jul 21, 2021 at 1:10
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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.– narutoJul 21, 2021 at 2:14
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@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 Jul 21, 2021 at 10:53