Questions tagged [etymology]
語源. The study of the origin of words and the historical development of their meanings. Sometimes used for kanji as well; we currently don't have a separate tag for character origins.
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Etymology of 鞄 (かばん)
I recently learned of the Korean word 가방 (gaban), which is supposedly derived from 鞄 (かばん), but it seems there isn't much of a solid trail after that.
From what I can tell, it might be related to the ...
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The origin of 首にする
I've come across an interesting idiom in the following sentence:
もしも私が社長だったら、あの人を首にすると思います。
If I were the company president, I would fire that person.
What is the origin of the idiom 首にする?
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Why is svaha in Japanese sowaka?
I know this is a more Chinese centered question, but, if svaha sounds more like suwaha, why is it transliterated sowaka? Or more straight to the point, why is it that the Chinese word sowaka might ...
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Is there a particular meaning or origin to the last name 宇多田?
Japanese last names often refer to some type of location or geographical feature, but in this case I am not certain if the name has an abstract, metaphorical, or literal meaning. "Many rice ...
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すっからかん, あっけらかん, and the supposed (adverb) suffix かん
すっからかん is usually theorized to come from すっかりから, or a corruption/change in pronunciation from a weird amalgamation of a Chinese phrase. However, あっけらかん is an adverb, and while あっけら has similar origins ...
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Does みな have an origin, or at least one that can be theorized about?
I personally think this question is self explanatory, so I'm going to add context. I searched up the etymology for 皆, not the kanji but its reading, and didn't find anything for it. It may be み with a ...
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Why nominalize words instead of using them directly as verbs, adverbs or adjectives? [duplicate]
My question is focused particularly on verbs ending in て form nominalised with の and adverbs ending in く also nominalised with の:
かねての instead of かねる
近くの instead of 近くある/近い
My understanding of nouns ...
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Etymology of でしょう?
Does anyone know what でしょう originally comes from?
And are those forms ever used nowadays?
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Etymology of 目茶目茶
Does anyone know how the kanji for "eye" and "tea" came to be joined to mean "disorderly"? (I am a beginning student and cannot read advanced monolingual dictionaries.) ...
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What is the implied subject in 夏から秋にかける?
Consider
夏から秋にかけて台風がよく来ます。
Typhoons frequently come from summer to autumn.
I know that 夏から秋にかけて effectively means "from summer to autumn". But more literally I assume it means "from ...
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The actual meaning of 別に (べつに)
Though this question has been asked a lot, I do not find any explanation with the literal meaning and the logic behind the expression (with 別 referring to "distinction").
As a result, it's ...
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Why does 中止 also mean to cancel
中止 literally means to stop halfway (中で止まる). 中止 in Chinese also only means to terminate something already started. How did 中止 get the meaning of cancelling something not started at all in Japanese?
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What does ごめん come from?
I'm trying to understand what ごめん comes from. From the following questions:
Does ごめん really mean sorry?
Use of なさい in ごめんなさい
What's the difference between なさい and てください / でください?
I've compiled a ...
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What is the W for Ｗワーク
Just as the title, what is the W in Ｗワーク?
There is also those
U-turn
I-turn.....etc
Could you elaborate why is it just a single leter and what is the meaning of it?
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How is Tsuyuri Kumin's name (五月七日くみん) read with 3 characters when it's made up of 4 kanji?
From the Chuunibyou anime, Kumin's last name is Tsuyuri (3 characters), but written as 五月七日 (4 kanji characters). How can this be? At first, I thought it might just be a chuuni thing, where you write ...
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輪廻's meanings (cycle) where does it come from?
Last weekish or so I made a question about てを verb, and a person told me it was a duplicate question, and that 輪廻 in the case my question was being asked was transitive. So I searched on wiktionary ...
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Does the いは in 或いは come from any term, and if so, how is it/was it used?
I was curious about いは in 或いは because ある is in its plain form however I can't find anything on it. I don't have any physical dictionary, either nor knowledge of if this is archaic Japanese
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Where does the abbreviation こ, apparently meaning to be in a state, come from?
I asked this question because I saw a pun in the song デンパラダイム where the producer tuned a lyric stating マッハ木っ端ミジンコ土っ管! I initially translated it as 'in the earthen pipes the negligibly tiny water fleas ...
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Ghost word and Ghost Kanji in Japanese
In Japanese, are there any words/kanji that are written in dictionarys but actually don't exist at all? Like the "Ghost word" in English.
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Does anyone know the deal with the compound 進捗?
I always found 進捗 to be an odd Sino-Japanese compound for two reasons:
it involves the character 捗 which barely occurs in Chinese, except for one rare compound 捗攄 (bu4 shu1) "to vanish" in ...
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Should "obake" be understood to refer to shapeshifters, or rather to things which have been transformed?
In the tvtropes article on Youkai, the following remark is made on the meaning of "obake":
Obake is another Japanese word that can indicate some type of monster. Derived from the word for &...
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Is 苦手 etymologically related to 苦い？
Is 苦手 etymologically related to 苦い？ Does the former derive from the latter? Does the fact that they have the same root kanji make this obvious, or is there something about 手 that also gives me ...
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How did 今ひとつ get its negative meaning?
The word 今ひとつ has the surface meaning "yet another, one more", but it seems to be more popularly used to mean "not entirely satisfactory", for example:
その薬の効果は今ひとつだった。
The ...
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The construction and etymology of -たら
Ever since I learned that "if" and "when" can be used as translations for the -たら conditional form depending on the context, I have been looking for an explanation of its ...
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how did 二段 verbs shift into 一段?
How was the process? i know that in 鎌倉時代, the 終止形 and 連体形 started to be used interchangeably + only the 連体形 form survived and replaced the 終止形.
But here is where i get lost, lets say the classical 下二段 ...
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-た and -たり meaning and etymology
I have done some research on where the so-called past tense, the -た form, came from (after hearing that there is no such thing as conjugation in Japanese).
Through my research I read that it came from ...
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What is the etymology of Saikoro (dice) and why is it written in katakana?
Recently I learned that the Japanese for dice is サイコロ.
The kanji is 塞子 which is Saizi in pinyin.
So the サイ part comes from 塞 but why katakana ?
子 is sometimes translated as こ so the コ must come from ...
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Implication of Xがよい
I often see phrases of the form Xがよい (where X is a noun) e.g. 頭がよい, 仲がよい etc. In these examples the characteristic being described is desirable (clever, good relationship etc) so よい seems sensible.
I ...
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Why isn't there an actual Japanese word for "balcony"?
The Japanese word for "balcony" is a loanword of veranda - ベランダ (Beranda). Veranda is a Anglo-Indian word from Hindi varanda which came from Portuguese varanda and is extensively used in ...
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Why does 色々 mean "various"?
I have been wondering why 色々 meant "various". I reckon that the archaic "various colours" meaning (as listed on Jisho) generalized to "various", but I wonder why (or how, ...
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Why is 閉ざす the "-す form" of 閉じる when the classical form was kami nidan 閉づ?
This has really confused me for a long time. Considering the fact that the Classical Japanese form of the verb 閉じる is 閉づ, the expected reflex of 閉ざす should be *閉だす; 閉じる is actually etymologically 閉ぢる ...
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The true meaning of お陰様で
In the past (or even today) were there certain people who, when saying お陰様で, actually believed and meant that their state of well-being was in fact due to people (or beings, whether they be ...
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"て" in どういたしまして
I have read on other threads here (as well as on other pages online) that the て in expressions such as どういたしまして, 初めまして or あけましておめでとうございます was not the て-form but rather "a final particle used for ...
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Differences of words like 先輩 between Japanese, Chinese, and Korean?
I understand the history of Japan's origin coming from China, which is why Japanese involves Chinese characters. However, I recently realized that there are some words in Japanese that are actually ...
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結構 etymology - from structure to quite
The word 結構 ([けっこう]{HLLL}), as in "結構幸せです", functions as either an adverb or an adjective, and it now means something like "quite" or "fine" (the "no thanks" ...
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Why does 安否 ("peaceful" + "negate") combine to mean "safety"?
Breaking the Kanji from down 安否 into their constituent meanings:
安: content, peaceful, quiet
否: negate
Question: Why would combining (e.g.) "peaceful" with "negate" result in a ...
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Origin of 「セキ」 when used in game of go 碁
I have seen some sites attributing「セキ」to 関 as in:
https://jisho.org/search/%E9%96%A2
https://yuki19925704.com/igo-seki/ (scroll to section that talks about 囲碁の「セキ」の語源)
However, the classic term in ...
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What is the "では" in "それでは"?
My teacher told me the "で" in "それでは" was not the particle "で", would that mean it is the same "では" as in "ではない" (aka the て-form of です)? If, so what is ...
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where does ~ない come from
what's the reason all negative verbs in Japanese ends with ない?
食べない
行かない
来ない
しない
is It related to あるverb? I am interested in knowing the origin
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What is the etymology of 催{もよお}す?
What is the etymology of 催{もよお}す. Neither Wiktionary nor Daijisen give any information on the topic. Is there any connection to 押{お}す?
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吉川線 (yoshikawa-sen) is translated as meaning "neck markings indicative of strangulation". What's the origin for this term (yoshikawa in particular)
To my knowledge, 吉川 (yoshikawa) serves only as a name. And yet, for some reason, 吉川線 ("yoshikawa lines" as it were) has the meaning of marks on the neck usually indicative of strangulation ...
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Connection between phenomime じ and adverb じっ‐と?
じ(ーーーー...) seems to be a phenomime, a word which evokes the idea of the state 'staring'.
じっ‐と is an adverb meaning something along the lines of being still, quiet, focused at somebody or something, ...
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Is there considered to be socio-cultural gender in japanese language and do job title variations exist?
Feminist linguistics partly revolve around a concept of with job titles associated biological gender.
In English and German one would associate the neutral word "doctor" with a man: it is ...
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Why doesn't the て form of a verb connect to たい? [duplicate]
According to wikipedia, the て form is the result of sound changes that occurred when the 連用形 proceeded the particle て.
Historical
Contemporary
買いて
買って
打ちて
打って
知りて
知って
遊びて
遊んで
住みて
住んで
死にて
死んで
...
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Etymology of くだらない
In the first episode of Death Note, the main character utters:
まったくくだらねえ
which means
Completely worthless
I'm assuming "くだらねえ" is the masculine-slang-negative of 下る, which means "to ...
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What's going on in the word 同い年?
The word 同い年 is presumably related to the adjective 同じ. But what happened to the consonant in the root? I thought this might be an example of イ音便, but typically this happens to -k, -g only.
Is this ...
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Does the concept of word families exist in Japanese?
In English, we would probably say that fortune, fortunate and unfortunate belong to the word family fortune. A Japanese analogy would most likely place 返{かえ}る and 返{かえ}す in the same language family. ...
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What's the reading of kanji "入" in "入る", "hai" or "hairu"?
If I look up the word "入る" in a dictionary, it would tell me its reading is はい・る, but does that mean the kanji "入" is read as はい? If I look up the kanji in 漢字源, It's obviously ...
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What's the origin of "さ", the nonsubjective (dunno how to call it nominalizer)
So, I know that the subjective nominalizer み comes from the imperfective/irrealis form of む, apparently the subjective particle that makes things into subjective verbs?? I just heard this on a website....
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Dictionary or website with comprehensive word origin information
When I use an automatic Japanese text analyzer, it provides me with a list of words and also short information about what kind of word it is. Japanese (和), Chinese (漢), Foreign (外) or mixed (混). Is ...
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