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I recently came across the phrase うれション, referring to when a dog accidentally urinates out of excitement. Fairly obviously the first part is derived from 嬉しい, but what else comes together to form うれション?

Its page on jLearn.net and other online dictionaries list しょんべん in a "see also" section, which makes sense from a definition standpoint, but it's non-obvious to me how the rest of うれション is derived from しょんべん.

I've also also seen it explained that the ション comes from テンション "tension", which makes sense and I can see how "tension" could have an implication of "needing to urinate", but I don't know if this is actually the case and don't want to blindly trust what I've read on some random forum.

Is anyone able to confirm either of these potential etymologies or explain an alternative?

Edit: This question made a lot more sense in my head, where the prominence of しょうべん on the jLearn results page for しょんべん made me start reading both as しょうべん. I failed to notice that they were different even as I put しょんべん into my question in place of しょうべん.

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  • Do you know 立ちション?
    – aguijonazo
    Dec 3, 2021 at 3:46
  • I do now, and I see the construction of うれション obviously now. The しょうべん reading on the jLearn page seems to have blinded me to しょんべん itself.
    – user48874
    Dec 3, 2021 at 16:50

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Just as the dictionarys say, it's clearly from うれしい and しょんべん. Japanese people like to make four-mora abbreviations like this one. See: Is there a generally accepted "rule" for truncating loan words?

At least in Japanese, テンション has no association with urination.

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  • You're absolutely right; I'm embarrassed to have missed that. When I clicked the link for しょんべん, the top result on the page was しょうべん and I guess that made me completely fail to notice the other readings.
    – user48874
    Dec 3, 2021 at 16:32

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