Given the number of mnemonics involving “shit”, I don’t think that explanation holds water.
oh! perhaps my delicate sensibilities have self-censored them. I don’t remember any yet… oh yes maybe it was alluded to in ‘down’, you’re right.
Still think my fly mnemonic is better 
That one you can probably ignore since the readings are basically from 駆ける and 飛ぶ.
Now that it’s in my queue, I’m kind of baffled that for 児 they didn’t go with the kanji looking like it’s got the number 18 in it despite it meaning “child”. Like, it’s right there for the taking, and yet we’re going with that shpiel about sticks and the sun.
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Interesting take.
But for Kanji they always just rely on radicals. They get more creative when introducing new radicals.
Sometimes my mnemonic for the reading ends up relying on the actual English translation and nothing to do with the WK mnemonic at all. It’s weird and it’s only a few times but when I see 城 I know easily that it means castle. And in my head I think of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, and the reading of white is しろ which is also the reading for “castle”. So it’s literally a しろいしろ 
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Heh. My mnemonic for 売 / ばい is that the reading (“buy”) is just the opposite of the meaning (“sell”).
Sometimes I think it’s just that the good people at WK don’t want to put anything rude.
The reading for 打 used to refer to domestic violence against children so… uh…
(I mean, at least they changed it to something less offensive so I don’t want to be too rude here. But it is a tiny bit of an oversight.)
LOL same for me with ばい！
I’d like to point you towards:
But I definitely agree they’re just trying not to be rude-I mean, we’re always at liberty to come up with our own mnemonics, so why should they be the bad guy? They put every しつ mnemonic as shih tzu, but I’m pretty sure everyone replaces that one.
I had 親しい in my lessons just today and the mnemonic there references the “shitter” so let’s not pretend they’re squeamish.
And in the case of chikan, well, Koichi is right - he didn’t make that one up. That is just what the kanji mean. And I don’t see how else you’d describe it. If anything, I’m glad that they just flat-out admit that the word is kind of gross and awful and has racist implications, rather than dance around it.
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They use “fuck you” for ふく IIRC.
Well, they use “F**k you” which makes more sense because the two censored letters are not even remotely pronounced like ふく but yeah.
true, haha! never fails to work for me though 
[quote=“Taschi, post:92, topic:47873, full:true”]
In fact, upthread I already complained about inconsistency in the various “shit” mnemonics (most are shita, while one is shito instead. There’s also one that’s shiita, but at least they call that out as an exception)
Woof. Especially annoying because there’s no need to make up a speculative “theory” about this. Most kanji and vocab derivations, including for 痴漢, are easy to find online, because Japanese lexicography is very well developed.
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a) I am not sure how reputable a source “mobility-8074.at.webry.info” is. Are they peer-reviewed?
b) That etymology doesn’t make the word any less awful given that 漢 is pretty much exclusively relating to China in modern Japanese aside from the word that means “sex offender”. Just because the word wasn’t deliberately designed to carry that connotation, that connotation is still there.
(And let’s not get into how gross it is to play off sexual molestation as “stupid”.)
im crying 
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a) Google “痴漢 語源” and you will see a billion other sources, including academic articles.
b) I wasn’t commenting on the awfulness (or not) of the word, just the odd way WK explained it, expanding on the post I was replying to.
(Not sure what your attitude is about here?)
Yeah, WK’s neglect of etymology really bugs me, especially in cases where the actual etymology is a lot easier to remember then the explanation they came up with. I’ve actually been tempted to make my own version of WK, but of course I’m only one person and not a native Japanese speaker either.
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I mean, the etymology outlined in that article requires teaching an entirely new meaning for 漢… but yeah, it would probably be better.