jukujikun

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 熟字訓 (jukujikun, literally “compound character reading”).

Noun

Examples
大 (ō-, “big”) + 人 (hito, “person”) = 大人 (otona, “adult”) 煙 (kemuri, “smoke”) + 草 (kusa, “grass”) = 煙草 (tabako, “tobacco”) 七 (nana, “7”) + 夕 (yū, “evening”) = 七夕 (Tanabata, “Tanabata”)

jukujikun (plural jukujikun)

1. (linguistics) A Japanese word whose kanji spelling conveys the meaning based on the individual characters, but whose reading is not directly related to the spelling.

Related terms

• ateji (当て字)
• gikun (義訓)

References

• Taylor, I., & Taylor, M. M. (1995) Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 302.

Japanese

Romanization

jukujikun

1. Rōmaji transcription of じゅくじくん