引き prefix / 抜くpostfix

Japanese Language Questions
1

Can someone explain pls what’s the purpose of verb/prefix 引き in many words in japanese, for instance:
引き締める、引き戻す、引き離す、引き止める
According to jisho, most of the words starting with 引き mean the same as words without, so I’ve wondered what’s the actual purpose of it and does it really change the meaning of the word

Also, I’ve encountered words that ending with 抜く, for instance:
突き抜く、引き抜く、追い抜く
Is it sort of postfix, that can be used in other words for some purpose, or it is just words that ending with 抜く

Thanks!

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2

I’m not really sure I accept the premise that they mean the same thing.

Have you read monolingual definitions of them? For instance:

戻す means to restore something to its original state or location.
もとの状態や、もとあった場所などへ返す。

引き戻す means to return something to its original place by pulling on it.
引っ張って元の所へ戻す。

There are plenty of times I can 戻す something with no pulling action.

引き戻す would be used where you pull on something, or the action figuratively feels like pulling.

This goes for the others as well. You’re pulling to achieve some purpose. Though, again, it’s possible the pulling is figurative sometimes.

My recommendation would be to use a monolingual dictionary.

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I’ve seen lots of mentions of monolingual dictionaries, do you have any recommendation on one that you use? I’ve never looked into it

4

For quick things like this, I usually use the dictionary aggregator weblio. It will find all the dictionaries in its database that contain your search and return their results.

For most people, that should be sufficient, unless they get really into dictionaries.

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If you haven’t seen it yet, there is a whole thread devoted to that topic if you’re looking for a deep dive: Monolingual dictionary corner
Also the thread owner is super helpful when it comes to questions of any kind.

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My dictionary has this entry for 抜く

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I think the word you were looking for was suffix by the way

7

That one is more like when you put it on something that doesn’t normally have it. Like やりぬく or がんばりぬく, and it means “do completely” or “do to the end.”

In something like 追い抜く, it doesn’t mean “chase to the end”. It’s like the other examples I was discussing, 追うこと and 抜くこと combined. That is to say, you 追う “chase” and then 抜く “go past”.

But it’s true that it’s worth knowing about the auxiliary verb form as well.

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It can be either – as noted above there is a -抜く auxiliary/suffix, which can be productively combined with other verbs to modify their meaning in a predictable way. But Japanese also has a lot of ‘compound verbs’ which are single words made by combining two verbs, and sometimes 抜く is the second part of a compound word. These are best thought of as individual words because the combined meaning isn’t a transparent combination of the meanings of the two verbs when separate.

I have a “Handbook of Japanese Compound Verbs” that classifies the various different possible semantic relations between the parts of compound verbs (eg means+goal, manner+action, action+direction) and gives 200 common examples with examples of usage. I dunno that I’d recommend buying it unless you like buying language-related books, though – the introduction is interesting but I’ve never actively used it as a reference work.

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