Japanese words that don’t exist, but should

In The Meaning of Tingo, author Adam Jacot de Boinod admits that — in researching his book — he found many unusual foreign words that he could not, in the end, verify.

Two of my favorite of these unverified words were attributed to Japanese:

  • Age-otori, which means ‘to look worse after a haircut’
  • Ariga-meiwaku, which is ‘an act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude’.

Posted by | Comments (5)  | August 9, 2006
Category: General


5 Responses to “Japanese words that don’t exist, but should”

  1. Dan McMinn Says:

    Might I suggest some Russian?

    1) everybody talks about schaudenfreude as if only the Germans could think of such a diabolical word. The Russians have “zloradost” – which means, roughly “taking joy in evil/the misfortune of others”. Pretty much the same thing.

    The Russian word for midget is “Liliput”

    To play someone for a fool is “veshat lapsha na ushi” – hang noodles from their ears.

    and the word for ladybug is “bozhya korovka” or “God’s little cow”

    And the hard disk on your computer is called a “Winchester” (ok “Vinchester”) because they were originally created using vacuum tubes that had the approximate gauge of rifles.

  2. Anna Says:

    A Russian equivalent (except without the gratitude part) to Ariga-meiwaku is: “Medvezhiya usluga,” which literally means: “a bear’s help.”

  3. Tony Says:

    I believe the word is arigata meiwaku, not ariga meiwaku.

    I’m not sure about age otori, though.

  4. japanese words Says:

    Yes, I think To is correct. It should be arigata-meiwaku.

  5. jimgoose Says:

    “And the hard disk on your computer is called a “Winchester” (ok “Vinchester”) because they were originally created using vacuum tubes that had the approximate gauge of rifles.”

    Heh – not quite. It comes from the IBM 3330 Direct Access Storage Facility, an early hard-disk from the late ’70s which was code named “Winchester”. Because of the dual 30MB module design, it was named in honour of the Winchester Model 1894, also known as the “30-30”!