( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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日直・にっちょく・day duty; class duty
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進路・しんろ・route, path; one’s future (e.g. after graduating)
- 進路希望・しんろきぼう・wishes for one’s future path (e.g. after graduating)
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白ける・しらける・to become dampened (in mood/spirit); to become disenchanted; to become apathetic
- 白らけ世代・しらけせだい・generation of young people (esp. of the 1970s) apathetic about social issues
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豆知識・まめちしき・trivia; snippet of knowledge
I’ve started watching Azumanga Daioh, and finding it both hilarious and adorable. However, its over-the-top cuteness is actually proving to be a bit of an issue; I’ve been up coughing all night, and in my current sleep-deprived state, I get really emotional whenever the slightest inconvenience befalls one of the characters (especially Osaka). Like, earlier in this episode, her handkerchief fell in the sink, and I was on the verge of tears.
Anyhow, the word 日直 came to me while Chiyo was collecting an アンケート.
Specifically, it was a 進路希望のアンケート.
However, it’s kind of difficult to make out what Chiyo is saying, because she speaks in a really baby-like voice. As a result, while trying to figure out what kind of アンケート it was, I stumbled upon the words 白ける and 白け世代. Not the most useful words, perhaps, but it caught my attention because I’ve heard of this phenomenon but without having a name for it.
豆知識 comes from Osaka trying to set up a joke about beans and now I need to go to bed because the fact that the joke didn’t land is making me more emotional than is reasonable.
That’s not a translation, DeepL’s just looked that one up in the dictionary. 
well, another definition is Pomelo…not quite as exciting as the Deepl / whatever dictionary you’re using for the above description for baggy pants…just sayin’ . But I AM a big pomelo fan…lol
両生類 - amphibian, and 爬虫類 - reptile
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カビ・mold; mildew
- かびる・to mold
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殺戮・さつりく・murder; massacre
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膠・にかわ・glue (esp. gelatinous glue)
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膠着・こうちゃく・adhesion; deadlock; agglutination
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膠着状態・こうちゃくじょうたい・standstill; deadlock; standoff
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膠着語・こうちゃくご・agglutinating language
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I’ve started watching Loki (season 2), and the word 殺戮 came up in the subtitles … with furigana, so you know it’s good!
I wasn’t familiar with the kanji 戮, but it seems to be a really uncommon kanji meaning “kill”, so 殺戮 is bascially “kill-kill”; a massacre/slaughter, basically.
My subtitle file for this episode also clarified the word as “殺戮（さつりく）”.
Trying to come up with a mnemonic for 戮:
You come across three feathers (翏) and a halberd (戈). Nobody uses a halberd just to trim feathers, so clearly somebody has killed some birds.
How many birds? Well, three, obviously, since there are three feathers. That’s a veritable hat-trick of killing … a satsu-riku, if you will.
Since this mnemonic is pretty bad, I went to see if perhaps there was some other kanji in the 翏 phonetic series that would be easier. No luck, I’m afraid, although I did come across one kanji that may be at least somewhat useful: 膠
Its meaning is “glue”. My mnemonic for this is:
I have a body, and I have some feathers. My immediate instinct is to glue these feathers to my body. With these beautiful feathers glued to my body, I’ll be able to do the things I’ve always wanted to do, such as flying through the sky or attracting a mate.
When used as a word, this word means “glue”, but it doesn’t seem to be particularly common (compared to 糊); I doubt I’ll ever use this word, myself, but I suppose I might still come across it.
This word particularly refers to gelatin-based glues.
The reading, にかわ, supposedly comes from 煮 + 皮, because you get gelatin by boiling skin (and bones and other animal tissue). Like, when you hear people joke about horses getting turned into glue when they lose a race, this is the kind of glue they’re talking about.
That being said, for the mnemonic, I think it might be better to think of this as 二 + 川. I have two rivers, which is way too many. Clearly, I have to use glue to glue them together.
More useful, I think is the compound word 膠着. Not so much on its own, but more when used in longer compounds, such as 膠着状態 (although it seems the 膠 is often written out as こう).
Also, 膠着語 means “agglutinating language”. This is a type of language with a high morpheme-to-word count, including everybody’s favorite language: Klingon!
Oh, and Japanese, I guess.
Anyhow, I guess I’ll get back to watching Loki, as I paused the episode when the word 殺戮 appeared about ten seconds into the first episode (well, actually, the “Last time on Loki …” segment before the episode; I haven’t gotten to the episode proper yet).
I think how uncommon it is really depends on what kind of reading you are doing. I’ve seen 殺戮 a lot in light novels and one novel I’ve read. About half the time I saw it with furigana.
I’ve never seen the kanji used outside of 殺戮 though, so in that sense it is pretty specific.
Bonus
The novel I’m reading currently had the kanji for this sans furigana: "黴”
腹持ち - はらもち - ability of a food to fill you up
アンチ - ダーさんひどい〜 アンチがここにもいた！！ - anti/hater
Just some unsolicited advice, for kanji like 戮 you’re basically only ever going to see it in 殺戮 and there’s no other word that starts with 殺 and ends with something remotely resembling it. For those, you really can just memorize the entire word. I don’t think I could recognize 膠 or 戮, but show me 殺戮 or 膠着状態 and I can read it in an instant. The more complicated and rare a kanji is, the easier it is to recognize it in vocabulary. So basically, what I’m getting at is you don’t need to make mnemonics or anything.
Who knows, perhaps he plays MTG and stumbles across this common card from 7 years ago!
Side note: all Japanese MTG cards have furigana and the English card name is “Shoulder to Shoulder.”
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急かす／急かせる・せかす／
急かせる・to rush (somebody); to urge on -
産休・さんきゅう・maternity leave
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おむつ・diaper
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祟り・たたり・curse; divine punishment; wrath
- 触らぬ神に祟りなし・さわらぬかみにたたりなし・avoid interfering with something to avoid trouble (lit. “if you don’t touch a kami, it won’t curse you”)
The word おむつ does have kanji – お襁褓 – but they appear to be rarely used. They also appear to be jukujikun (that is, the reading of 襁褓 is not a combination of the readings of 襁 and 褓).
The むつ part is actually a shortened form of むつき. Apparently, this breaks down into 身つ着, with the つ being an old attributive/genitive particle (compare with まつげ for eyelashes, which breaks down as 目つ毛, or 自ら, which comes from 身つ柄).
I heard 祟り (normally spelled using kana) while watching Mieruko-chan. Hana mentioned she had avoided using a vending machine because there was a big moth on it, commenting 触らぬ蛾に祟りなし, which the subtitles translated as “Let sleeping moths lie”. This suggested that there was a cultural reference I wasn’t getting, leading me to look up the saying 触らぬ神に祟りなし.
Yeah, that’s probably true; if you’re reading anything where people (or trading cards) get massacred every now and then, it’ll probably show up quite a bit.
Interesting; I wouldn’t have expected that.
I probably won’t focus on memorizing the kanji right now, but on the plus side, its components make sense:
What is that minute (微) and black (黒) stuff? Why, it’s 微+黒 = 黴!
Hehe, yeah, that’s probably true. However, I enjoy spending a bit of time with the new words I come across, and coming up with a mnemonic is one way of doing so (along with looking up etymologies or finding interesting example sentences, or just posting about them here) 
I came across this word by accident when I was looking up something else car related on Jisho. It made me laugh, don’t think I’ll be forgetting this one anytime soon 
The translation painmobile is kinda lackluster, actually. 痛い does mean painful, but it also means cringe which is the meaning used in this context.
So it’s more like cringemobile or cringecar
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駆除・eliminating pests; getting rid of vermin
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剥ぐ・to tear off; to peel off; to skin; to flay
- 剥がれる・to come off; to come unstuck
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鍍金／ 滅金・1) surface plating; 2) pretense; not showing one’s true colors
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蘊蓄・great erudition; extensive knowledge
- 蘊蓄を傾ける・to draw on one’s profound knowledge
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爪の垢を煎じて飲む・to learn from somebody’s example (literally “to boil and drink the dirt under somebody’s fingernails”)
When I heard the word くじょ used for pest extermination, I felt quite certain that the second kanji would be 除, but I couldn’t figure out what the first might be. I was surprised to find that it was 駆, in part because my mind always goes to the kun’yomi か, used in words such as 駆け込む. Still, it’s nice to see that it shares an on’yomi with its phonetic component, 区.
Also, I was expecting the first kanji to be something meaning “pest” or “vermin”. However, I guess that it’s implied; just as exterminators don’t need to clarify that they only exterminate bad things, the people doing 駆除 probably don’t need to clarify that they’re not driving off cupcakes and winning lottery tickets.
駆除 will also be my last contribution to this thread from watching 見える子ちゃん, as I have unfortunately finished it (and a second season doesn’t look too likely).
The words 剥ぐ and 剥がれる come from 森田さんは無口.
I probably won’t keep watching that show, but while looking into the syntax for 剥がれる, I did come across an interesting expression: メッキが剥がれる (“the pretense drops; the mask comes off; somebody shows their true colors”).
Apparently, the word メッキ originally comes from 滅金, being an amalgamation of gold and mercury, so called because the gold was dissolved in mercury, essentially “ruining” it.
While looking around for another anime to watch, I figured I’d try Pretty Cure; it does seem to be insanely popular in Japan, so I would like to have at least a passing familiarity with it.
I can’t say I’ve fallen in love with the show, but it did introduce me to a character nicknamed 蘊蓄女王 (“the queen of knowledge”).
Nagisa comments that perhaps she should eat her nail clippings, and is corrected.
Funnily enough, there is a strangely similar saying in Klingon:
butlh ghajbogh nuv’e’ yIHo’!
(“Admire the person with dirt under their fingernails!”)
[butlh, dirt under one’s fingernails, is used as a metaphor similar to how “gall” is used in English.]
It’s “boil up the dirt from under her fingernails”, which is why it’s drink rather than eat.
And if I have to do that in order to follow someone’s example, I think I’d rather not.
I mean … surely that would depend on how long you boil them for?
Also, does the word 煎じる rule out the possibility that the 爪の垢 wrapped into dumplings before boiling?
Also, on the subject of horrifying things, I’m adding another latest word:
- 方言札・ほうげんふだ・dialect card (card used as punishment to shame children who spoke non-standard Japanese)
From this video on the Tōhoku dialect(s).
There’s one word in particular that Precure (and Nagisa in particular) taught me:
あり得ない！！！