Special kanji words derived from other words

Nice, now we just have to be careful to add things in 五十音順 :+1: I still don’t know the order right, nice opportunity to hammer it into my head :sweat_smile:

むしばむ = 虫食む (valid spelling)

This one is probably even more special than the others because the kanji 蝕 itself is a combination of 食 + 虫 (it uses a different version of 食, though).


Ah, Kana Symbols. Take Note How Many You Remember Well.

poor ん doesn’t fit in

Nobody uses that one anyway :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Nooooo…

(Ah great, now Discourse is complaining about my grammar. “Body seems unclear, is it a complete sentence?”. Thanks, MS Word. I actually intended to write that.)

Yeah. It’s a losing move in Shiritori, don’cha know?

なまぐさい = 生臭い (valid spelling)
みにくい = 見難い (not a valid spelling*)

*You can still use 見にくい, but it’s going to be the general meaning of adding にくい to verb stems, not synonymous with 醜い.

ねぐら = 寝座 (not a valid spelling)

Where do you find all these??

It all comes up while reading. Since nowadays I’m actively looking for those, it’s not that difficult either :wink:

やじり = 矢尻 (valid spelling)
燧石ひうちいし = 火打ち石 (valid spelling)
おもむく = 面向く (not a valid spelling)

I love you

Oh, I actually thought of a word to add!
I even used both search functions to make sure it hasn’t been added already:

Word: 向日葵
Reading: ひまわり
Origin: 日回り

Sunflower!

A big thanks to everyone who helped reorganising the list! I did now add furigana to the words with sound changes (to which it makes the most sense imo). However, I’m not too sure if furigana help with readability.

We also have the possibility to make the text bigger using HTML <big> tags which looks like this:

Bigger text

|Word|Origin|
|-|-|-|
|あかつき|あかとき|
|いずみ||
|いもうと|いもひと|
|おとうと|おとひと|
|つまず|つま|
|みずか|から|
|みなと||

What do you think?

  • Furigana with normal sized text is just perfect.
  • Furigana is nice but make the text bigger.
  • Leave three columns and put furigana on the third column only.
  • I don’t like furigana at all.

0 voters


I’d also like to give you the opportunity to retrospectively comment on the following contentual changes I’ve made to these words:

  • Moved 「たもつ」 (originated from 「つ」) to the words without sound changes because the character 「」 just uses an alternative reading that should still be valid today.
  • Changed the origin of 「みずから」 from 「のから」 to 「から
  • Changed the origin of 「みなもと」 from 「もと」 to 「もと

There’s another option: Add a fourth column for “origin reading” to avoid furigana entirely.

That said, it’s also fine as is. I don’t think the big text is appropriate.

Does two character words count?

剃刀 かみそり 髪剃り razor

(fun how the 剃 kanji is in resulting word, just in the wrong place)

Looks good to me ! I have added it, with another one I found recently こよみ =

Wow nice one! That one is so intuitive too.

Yeah, I was just about to comment how nice that word is.

Then let me say instead that 試みる = 心見る (already in the list) is a weird one. Why did 「み」 change from kanji to kana?

Although みる isn’t used as an auxiliary verb here, it’s common to write it in kana in that case, so I don’t think it’s that unusual.