Main and alternatives meanings

Hi friends :turtle:, is the main meaning WK displays of vocabulary the more used or is it the more literal meaning? For example, I was just doing the lesson for 一本気. Which has the main meaning One-Track Mind and Single Mindedness as an alternative. I have never really use the expression One-Track Mind before where as Single Mindedness is more common. I’m just curious and wondering if there’s something language/context specific that I’m missing.

Wanikani’s vocabulary selection is sometimes driven by kanji selection more than immediate vocab usefulness. 一, 本 and 気 are three extremely common kanji, but 一本気 is not a super common word (top 50k according to my jpdb extension).

It is interesting that WaniKani decided to put one-track mind first given that elsewhere I see it the other way around, like here on jisho.

For these words I tend to focus on remembering the readings since that’s the important part at this point (IMO), I get super lenient with the meanings using an undo script. It’s really not worth dwelling on these subtle nuances of niche vocab when you’re at WaniKani level 4…

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Thank you! That makes sense. It’s definitely a bit harder to remember the meaning when is an expression that’s not commonly used on english. I’ll follow your advice on focus on the reading.

The initial beta of WK predates the June 2012 edit to EDICT that added the “single-minded” gloss, so if this vocab item was present all the way back then, that might be the reason. (In general I would not put too much weight on the ordering of glosses in EDICT entries, though: there is no documented editorial policy that glosses should be in any particular order.)

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Ah I wasn’t aware of this detail.

Yes absolutely, that’s true for many (most?) dictionaries actually. My surprise was more to find the exact same meanings, just in the reversed order. Seemed like somebody deliberately swapped them somewhere for no obvious reason.