Masumi's Cool Etymologies

[KurokawaMasumi]

As I have mentioned in my my Weekly Log thread, when I have trouble remembering some vocabulary or grammar points, what I tend to do is dig a little through the etymology as it gives me a strong association and it usually results in me remembering something ‎ ‎‎‎‎ F O R E V E R ‎ ‎ .

I’m gonna go ahead and put out the following disclaimer right away cause I’ve already dealt with some of y’alls typical reactions before:

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT OPEN (unless you like unhinged rants)

This isn’t a scholarly article where I pretend to have seven PhDs and am out here claiming to have The Facts , FACT CHECKED by TV experts, etc.
This is just me doing whatever digging is satisfactory for me so that I can spin a narrative in my head and remember it (and I think I’m doing a pretty good job of guessing the provenance anyway).
If you want you can call this a collection of (non-)educated (“are you even credentialed bro???”) guesses rather than an etymology thread, but I prefer liking my opinions to assigning value to a piece of paper so I’m calling it Etymologies in this thread’s title.

Feel free to make your own contributions. I’ll be pinning (linking to?) all the comments that have some very cool deepest lore about terms we may come across on our Japanese learning journey.

[BreadmanNin]

Fantastic initiative. Knowing the etymology behind a word, and in fact knowing the origin of any type of concept, goes a huge way in helping to understand and remember. The area I work in is law, and in my work it really shows that those jurists who delve into the background of types of jurisdiction set themselves apart from others.

I’m very interested in what posts you’re going to make in this thread. I’m admittedly also quite curious what sources you use to find out about the etymology of words. I wouldn’t even know where to start tbh.

[EbonyMidget]

This one I posted ages ago for 馬鹿 has always stuck in my memory

日本語のEtymology Resources

All but one of the suggested origins on wikipedia seems to be ateji. The final option is that during the Qin dynasty some eunuchs brought a dear into the palace and said “Look at this strange horse I found” , anyone who was willing to point out it was a dear was deemed disloyal and killed. Seemingly there are problems with that theory but it is the funniest. Interestingly the english wikipedia actually has more information, and apparently the idea of sycophants telling someone a deer is a horse…

[Jessietora]

Really looking forward to hearing some of your etymologies, I sometimes find it hard to make a word stick in my head but if I come up with a ridiculous saying that only I will understand it seems to help hahah