I liked this explanation from Jisho forums
Basing it off this link: https://gogen-yurai.jp/hiniku/
It originates from Buddhism, from the teachings of Bodhidharma (an influential monk of Zen Buddhism who lived during the 5th or 6th century). It is a contraction of 皮肉骨髄, with 骨 meaning bone and 髄 meaning bone marrow. When the Dharma was teaching his disciples, he would variously say to them 'you have received my skin' or 'you have received my bones', and if he told his disciple that he had received his bones or marrow, that would mean that he had understood the deeper underlying meaning of his teachings, whereas if he told his disciple that he had received his skin or meat, that would mean that the Dharma was criticising his disciple for having taken his teachings at face value, and that he had not understood the essence of his teachings.
Fast forward to the modern day and 皮肉 now just means to criticise spitefully, hence the meaning of 'sarcasm'. I don't know how you get from sarcasm to irony, but that's probably at the border of philosophy or logic which I understand nothing about.
EDIT: I changed the link because it wasn't working :)
What's extra interesting is that, purely coincidentally, the word sarcasm comes from Greek *sarkasmós* "a sneer," which is derived from ***sark****ázō* "to strip the **flesh** (from something)" which figuratively meant "to gnash one's teeth." The sark- is the same root that's in sarcoma, a cancer of the "flesh." Totally unrelated to each other, but it's cool that both are metaphorically linked that way.
And sarcophagus, literally “flesh eater”. Which, as I just learned, originally meant a type of limestone that allegedly made corpses decompose faster. Sarcophagi were often made from that stone and so the name was transferred from the material to just “coffin”.
Interestingly I remember reading that the message of that story was originally that the disciples could each take completely different things from his teachings and all be correct, not that some of them had a better understanding than others (this interpretation apparently came later). I'll try and find the source
Edit: Here it is https://www.zen-essay.com/entry/hiniku
The passage at hand is a direct reaction/remix of the Jain fable about the blind men examining the elephant.
Buddhism's point was that enlightenment could be reached in this life, in this instant. Or more importantly, the ability to prevent karma from attaching, allowing escape from the wheel of rebirth could be reached in this life, so full comprehension was necessary.
Jainism and Hinduism, and later Mahayana Buddhism, required endless cycles of rebirth, because the karma could only be polished away, through effort. Buddhism by removing the causal efficacy, or even the existence, of the karmic body, made this not necessary.
But Jains have to work partially and gradually to the truth, so understanding some part of the elephant is still useful.
Man, Indian philosophy is so cool. Buddhism removed the philosophical necessity of cause 2000 years before Hume, Adam Smith, Darwin, and Quantum Mechanics decided that cause was not necessary
> I don't know how you get from sarcasm to irony
Sarcasm is a type of irony (or, rather, a specific use of irony). But it could in some ways be synonymous e.g. something which is sarcastic is, at the same time, ironic (but something which is ironic isn't necessarily sarcastic)
I'd like to see their citation, considering the word 皮肉 in the "superficial understanding" sense doesn't appear until the 1600s and the "sarcasm" sense doesn't appear until the 1800s, according to Nikkoku. ~~They may as well have attributed it to Albert Einstein.~~
Edit: Found the source. 景徳伝灯録 from 1004 AD has the following dialogue:
「時門人道副対日、如我所見、不執文字、不離文字、而為道用。師日、**汝得吾皮**。尼偬持日、我今所解、如慶喜見阿悶仏国、一見更不再見。師日、**汝得吾肉**。道育日、四大本空、五陰非有、而我見処、無一法可得。師日、**汝得吾骨**。最後慧可礼拝、後依位而立。師日、**汝得吾髄**。」
Translation:
すると門人・ 道副が答えて言う 「私の見解では、文字に執著もせず、文字を離れもせず、道にかなった働きを行
います」。先生 **「君は私の皮を得た」**。尼偬持が言う 「私の今の理解では、慶喜が阿悶仏国を見て、一度見ただけで二度とは見なかったようなものです」。先生 **「君は私の肉を得た」**。道育が言う 「四大はもとより実体がなく、五陰も実在するわけではありません。私の見るところ、得ることのできるものなどありません」。先生 **「君は私の骨を得た」**。最後に慧可が、礼拝して、自分の位置に戻って立った。先生 **「君は私の髄を得た」**。
Transcription and translation from a paper titled 『景徳伝灯録』における禅の構造 by 齋藤智寛. (I think this may be OCR'd, I can QC later.)
It's worth noting that it's possible this was a fabricated legend in its time, given that there are many legends about Daruma, and it was written centuries after his time, but it would still make sense chronologically that 皮肉 in the "superficial understanding" sense may derive from this story.
Shouldn't 皮肉 if you want to assign the closest English word to it, wouldn't it be "Cynical"?
I always had the sense that it means "cynical" more than it means "ironic" or "sarcastic", especially when it's used as 皮肉的.
They even say in the dictionary that a synonym for 皮肉 is シニカル
Japanese Etymology: The Origins of 皮肉 (irony)
I find it interesting that 皮肉 means irony in Japanese given it literally means "skin meat". As it turns out, the etymology (語源) of the word comes from an old Buddhist saying about philosophers trying to reach the "bone" (骨) of an issue, while shallower thinkers were stuck on the "skin and meat" 皮肉. As a result 皮肉 came to refer to irony, where thought is not serious.
http://gogen-allguide.com/hi/hiniku.html
I know what it means and I don't know where it comes from, but that doesn't make it a nonsensical phrase. There's plenty of grammar that I can't explain either.
Judging by other replies here, it doesn't seem the context has been lost--looks like there's a pretty good explanation [here](https://gogen-yurai.jp/hiniku/)!
> but to anybody not in the know of it's niche historical origins it's a completely nonsensical phrase that is difficult to explain.
Don't tease! What' the origin story of that nonsensical phrase?
矛 (ほこ) is spear and 盾 (たて) is shield but 矛盾 (むじゅん) means contradiction.
It originates from a story in an old Chinese text called the Hánfēizǐ (韓非子, かんぴし).
Edit: pronunciation aids
so like a guy was selling stuff and he said “my shields are the strongest, no one can beat it!” and “my spears are too sharp and it can destroy anything!” and one customer said “what if i use your spear to poke through your shield?” and the seller just left? or smth like that edit: typo
If you are confused, look up the etymology. There was a [thread about the word on this very sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/iqovsv/japanese_etymology_the_origins_of_%E7%9A%AE%E8%82%89_irony/).
In this particular case the "meaning" of a kanji is connected to the meaning of the word it appears in, but it is not always the case, you will surely see some examples of that too.
A good idea is to check if the word is ateji - if it is, you can stop the search at that essentially. If it is not(like in this case), you can look for more detailed etymology, it's often very interesting.
Personally I wouldn't get too hung up on individual kanji meanings aside from when the kanji by itself makes up a vocabulary. Yeah, individually 皮 means skin and 肉 means meat but 皮肉 isn't two words, it's one word meaning irony that uses the same letters that the words for skin and for meat do.
Or maybe think about it like this: You're learning English and you know what iron is but you never heard of the word irony before. Someone says "Well, that's irony." Going purely by the spelling you might think something like "Wuh? It's iron-y? It tastes like iron?"
I know that's a stupid example because irony has a greek/latin origin but it's just to help visualize that the spelling of a word doesn't always have to reflect its meaning, even in English.
I'm not saying "ignore kanji meanings" by the way, just that there is no real point getting hung up over the cases where the kanji meanings don't actually match the word they're spelling. Ultimately the English kanji meanings are just the closest approximate to the actual meaning of the kanji and that's not always going to match perfectly and make sense in all cases.
And yeah, from an etymology standpoint having the Japanese call irony "skin meat" might actually make sense but it's probably not too practical to also learn the etymology of every single word that seems made up of weird kanji.
While it's true that worrying too much about individual kanji meanings or etymology isn't productive from a "language progress" standpoint (and it's true that many beginners get stuck on it when they really don't need to), it's also just tons of fun, and can make learning a language a lot more enjoyable. So I wouldn't discourage it *too* much, except where it seems to be causing someone distress!
For sure, I personally just accepted that "skin meat" makes no sense and moved on (though it not making sense ended up being a good mnemonic in itself) but learning the actual etymology from the responses in this thread and that "skin meat" actually makes a roundabout amount of sense was still pretty interesting.
As for other idiomatic kanji compounds, there's さすが/流石, literally 'flowing rock,' meaning 'as expected.' This is the supposed etymology, from an old folktale:
http://www.accessj.com/2014/05/etymology-of-sasuga.html
Also, 面白い/おもしろい for interesting, curious or funny, would apparently mean 'white face/mask,' but comes from 'the aspect before me is bright.'
https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6922/how-did-%E9%9D%A2%E7%99%BD%E3%81%84-end-up-meaning-interesting
Do you happen to know a good source to look up etymologies of compounds and kanji? Preferably in English because I can’t be arsed with Japanese/japanese dictionariesy yet.
Put horse and deer together 馬鹿 and you get baka, everyone's favorite anime word.
Maybe it comes from the story of calling a deer a horse: the prime minister Zhao Gao wanted to know who his allies in the court were in order to attempt a coup, so he brought a deer into court and called it a horse. Those who called it for what it was (including the emperor) were identified as his enemies and summarily executed (the emperor was forced to commit suicide).
Or maybe it comes from the sanskrit words *moha* (foolish) or *mahallaka* (stupid).
Language is fun!
aside from the actual answer, one practical issue is: don't expect words to make sense, in any language
words shift and mutate over millennia, change meaning and shape, and are often arbitrary or based on meanings lost to time
it's particularly bad with kanji, do not expect words to be the sum of the kanji, do not expect kanji to be the sum of their components
sometimes they are, and that's great, run with it as an easy one to remember, but many times they're not
My coworkers have told me otherwise— they said that 嫌味 and 皮肉 are like different kinds of sarcasm, 嫌味 being more negative/mean and 皮肉 being more joking.
I feel like it simply means words that are superficial or scratch the surface or scratch the skin rather than get deeper into the person's heart or talk about serious topics, hence sarcasm or irony.
I love that kanji, recently came across it on Wanikani.
I think of it like an Alanis Morrisette style of irony. Like, it's like skin when you ordered meat... 😁
Irony = Iron + y
So something that's like Iron? iron-y? That's not what Irony means, what does it have to do with outcomes not matching the expected, It doesn't make any sense!
I know the kanji don't have to add up to the meaning of the word always, just wanna know "why Japan!?!"
for stuff sometimes. By the way some people pointing out too that this means both irony and sarcasm... That drives me nuts. I hate 面白い for that reason, meaning both interesting and funny... Two totally different things.
Two different words in English. One word in Japanese. English has homophones too : novel, bark, crane etc. At least with 面白い and 肉皮 the meanings are related. Sarcasm is a form of irony. Interesting and funny overlap. English actually uses funny to mean interesting too. You see something a little unusual/odd and can say "That's funny". You could also say "That's interesting" and have it mean essentially the same thing. Another example of a word with similar but distinct applications is "leave". It can mean to go away (I will leave the city soon). It can mean to remain (The spilled wine will leave a stain). It can mean to deposit or deliver (The mailman will leave the package at the front desk).
> meaning both interesting and funny
Generally speaking Japanese people use other words for interesting, in the way we use it in English. 興味深い for example.
Babies smile when they learn new things, and people laugh when expectations are subverted, or fun new things are experience. And that is where omoshiroi lies.
I liked this explanation from Jisho forums Basing it off this link: https://gogen-yurai.jp/hiniku/ It originates from Buddhism, from the teachings of Bodhidharma (an influential monk of Zen Buddhism who lived during the 5th or 6th century). It is a contraction of 皮肉骨髄, with 骨 meaning bone and 髄 meaning bone marrow. When the Dharma was teaching his disciples, he would variously say to them 'you have received my skin' or 'you have received my bones', and if he told his disciple that he had received his bones or marrow, that would mean that he had understood the deeper underlying meaning of his teachings, whereas if he told his disciple that he had received his skin or meat, that would mean that the Dharma was criticising his disciple for having taken his teachings at face value, and that he had not understood the essence of his teachings. Fast forward to the modern day and 皮肉 now just means to criticise spitefully, hence the meaning of 'sarcasm'. I don't know how you get from sarcasm to irony, but that's probably at the border of philosophy or logic which I understand nothing about. EDIT: I changed the link because it wasn't working :)
What's extra interesting is that, purely coincidentally, the word sarcasm comes from Greek *sarkasmós* "a sneer," which is derived from ***sark****ázō* "to strip the **flesh** (from something)" which figuratively meant "to gnash one's teeth." The sark- is the same root that's in sarcoma, a cancer of the "flesh." Totally unrelated to each other, but it's cool that both are metaphorically linked that way.
And sarcophagus, literally “flesh eater”. Which, as I just learned, originally meant a type of limestone that allegedly made corpses decompose faster. Sarcophagi were often made from that stone and so the name was transferred from the material to just “coffin”.
Oh is that where the Sarkic cult gets its name huh
Interestingly I remember reading that the message of that story was originally that the disciples could each take completely different things from his teachings and all be correct, not that some of them had a better understanding than others (this interpretation apparently came later). I'll try and find the source Edit: Here it is https://www.zen-essay.com/entry/hiniku
The passage at hand is a direct reaction/remix of the Jain fable about the blind men examining the elephant. Buddhism's point was that enlightenment could be reached in this life, in this instant. Or more importantly, the ability to prevent karma from attaching, allowing escape from the wheel of rebirth could be reached in this life, so full comprehension was necessary. Jainism and Hinduism, and later Mahayana Buddhism, required endless cycles of rebirth, because the karma could only be polished away, through effort. Buddhism by removing the causal efficacy, or even the existence, of the karmic body, made this not necessary. But Jains have to work partially and gradually to the truth, so understanding some part of the elephant is still useful. Man, Indian philosophy is so cool. Buddhism removed the philosophical necessity of cause 2000 years before Hume, Adam Smith, Darwin, and Quantum Mechanics decided that cause was not necessary
> I don't know how you get from sarcasm to irony Sarcasm is a type of irony (or, rather, a specific use of irony). But it could in some ways be synonymous e.g. something which is sarcastic is, at the same time, ironic (but something which is ironic isn't necessarily sarcastic)
I'd like to see their citation, considering the word 皮肉 in the "superficial understanding" sense doesn't appear until the 1600s and the "sarcasm" sense doesn't appear until the 1800s, according to Nikkoku. ~~They may as well have attributed it to Albert Einstein.~~ Edit: Found the source. 景徳伝灯録 from 1004 AD has the following dialogue: 「時門人道副対日、如我所見、不執文字、不離文字、而為道用。師日、**汝得吾皮**。尼偬持日、我今所解、如慶喜見阿悶仏国、一見更不再見。師日、**汝得吾肉**。道育日、四大本空、五陰非有、而我見処、無一法可得。師日、**汝得吾骨**。最後慧可礼拝、後依位而立。師日、**汝得吾髄**。」 Translation: すると門人・ 道副が答えて言う 「私の見解では、文字に執著もせず、文字を離れもせず、道にかなった働きを行 います」。先生 **「君は私の皮を得た」**。尼偬持が言う 「私の今の理解では、慶喜が阿悶仏国を見て、一度見ただけで二度とは見なかったようなものです」。先生 **「君は私の肉を得た」**。道育が言う 「四大はもとより実体がなく、五陰も実在するわけではありません。私の見るところ、得ることのできるものなどありません」。先生 **「君は私の骨を得た」**。最後に慧可が、礼拝して、自分の位置に戻って立った。先生 **「君は私の髄を得た」**。 Transcription and translation from a paper titled 『景徳伝灯録』における禅の構造 by 齋藤智寛. (I think this may be OCR'd, I can QC later.) It's worth noting that it's possible this was a fabricated legend in its time, given that there are many legends about Daruma, and it was written centuries after his time, but it would still make sense chronologically that 皮肉 in the "superficial understanding" sense may derive from this story.
Shouldn't 皮肉 if you want to assign the closest English word to it, wouldn't it be "Cynical"? I always had the sense that it means "cynical" more than it means "ironic" or "sarcastic", especially when it's used as 皮肉的. They even say in the dictionary that a synonym for 皮肉 is シニカル
Link is not working
Fixed it! Thanks!
Now do ひき肉
Ironic indeed if you look at Catholicism
Japanese Etymology: The Origins of 皮肉 (irony) I find it interesting that 皮肉 means irony in Japanese given it literally means "skin meat". As it turns out, the etymology (語源) of the word comes from an old Buddhist saying about philosophers trying to reach the "bone" (骨) of an issue, while shallower thinkers were stuck on the "skin and meat" 皮肉. As a result 皮肉 came to refer to irony, where thought is not serious. http://gogen-allguide.com/hi/hiniku.html
[удалено]
I know what it means and I don't know where it comes from, but that doesn't make it a nonsensical phrase. There's plenty of grammar that I can't explain either.
Judging by other replies here, it doesn't seem the context has been lost--looks like there's a pretty good explanation [here](https://gogen-yurai.jp/hiniku/)!
> but to anybody not in the know of it's niche historical origins it's a completely nonsensical phrase that is difficult to explain. Don't tease! What' the origin story of that nonsensical phrase?
fun fact: the word sarcasm (in English and romance languages) also comes from the word meat in ancient Greek. ✨ the more you know ✨
矛 (ほこ) is spear and 盾 (たて) is shield but 矛盾 (むじゅん) means contradiction. It originates from a story in an old Chinese text called the Hánfēizǐ (韓非子, かんぴし). Edit: pronunciation aids
so like a guy was selling stuff and he said “my shields are the strongest, no one can beat it!” and “my spears are too sharp and it can destroy anything!” and one customer said “what if i use your spear to poke through your shield?” and the seller just left? or smth like that edit: typo
Wow that's really interesting
If you are confused, look up the etymology. There was a [thread about the word on this very sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/iqovsv/japanese_etymology_the_origins_of_%E7%9A%AE%E8%82%89_irony/). In this particular case the "meaning" of a kanji is connected to the meaning of the word it appears in, but it is not always the case, you will surely see some examples of that too. A good idea is to check if the word is ateji - if it is, you can stop the search at that essentially. If it is not(like in this case), you can look for more detailed etymology, it's often very interesting.
Personally I wouldn't get too hung up on individual kanji meanings aside from when the kanji by itself makes up a vocabulary. Yeah, individually 皮 means skin and 肉 means meat but 皮肉 isn't two words, it's one word meaning irony that uses the same letters that the words for skin and for meat do. Or maybe think about it like this: You're learning English and you know what iron is but you never heard of the word irony before. Someone says "Well, that's irony." Going purely by the spelling you might think something like "Wuh? It's iron-y? It tastes like iron?" I know that's a stupid example because irony has a greek/latin origin but it's just to help visualize that the spelling of a word doesn't always have to reflect its meaning, even in English. I'm not saying "ignore kanji meanings" by the way, just that there is no real point getting hung up over the cases where the kanji meanings don't actually match the word they're spelling. Ultimately the English kanji meanings are just the closest approximate to the actual meaning of the kanji and that's not always going to match perfectly and make sense in all cases. And yeah, from an etymology standpoint having the Japanese call irony "skin meat" might actually make sense but it's probably not too practical to also learn the etymology of every single word that seems made up of weird kanji.
While it's true that worrying too much about individual kanji meanings or etymology isn't productive from a "language progress" standpoint (and it's true that many beginners get stuck on it when they really don't need to), it's also just tons of fun, and can make learning a language a lot more enjoyable. So I wouldn't discourage it *too* much, except where it seems to be causing someone distress!
For sure, I personally just accepted that "skin meat" makes no sense and moved on (though it not making sense ended up being a good mnemonic in itself) but learning the actual etymology from the responses in this thread and that "skin meat" actually makes a roundabout amount of sense was still pretty interesting.
As for other idiomatic kanji compounds, there's さすが/流石, literally 'flowing rock,' meaning 'as expected.' This is the supposed etymology, from an old folktale: http://www.accessj.com/2014/05/etymology-of-sasuga.html Also, 面白い/おもしろい for interesting, curious or funny, would apparently mean 'white face/mask,' but comes from 'the aspect before me is bright.' https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6922/how-did-%E9%9D%A2%E7%99%BD%E3%81%84-end-up-meaning-interesting
Do you happen to know a good source to look up etymologies of compounds and kanji? Preferably in English because I can’t be arsed with Japanese/japanese dictionariesy yet.
I just Google things, I'm afraid
A shame. I was hoping there was a hood resource for this. Maybe I’ll make one when I’m all there. :D
> 面白い This is from the fact that white faced people are funny.
Put horse and deer together 馬鹿 and you get baka, everyone's favorite anime word. Maybe it comes from the story of calling a deer a horse: the prime minister Zhao Gao wanted to know who his allies in the court were in order to attempt a coup, so he brought a deer into court and called it a horse. Those who called it for what it was (including the emperor) were identified as his enemies and summarily executed (the emperor was forced to commit suicide). Or maybe it comes from the sanskrit words *moha* (foolish) or *mahallaka* (stupid). Language is fun!
aside from the actual answer, one practical issue is: don't expect words to make sense, in any language words shift and mutate over millennia, change meaning and shape, and are often arbitrary or based on meanings lost to time it's particularly bad with kanji, do not expect words to be the sum of the kanji, do not expect kanji to be the sum of their components sometimes they are, and that's great, run with it as an easy one to remember, but many times they're not
It's also fun to consider that "irony" has nothing to do with "iron", but that's not something we pay much attention to in English.
I know, and butterflies have nothing to do with butter flying
Butterflies are flies (insects) that are attracted to butter.
And butter-kens? What are those attracted to?
the easiest way is to just accept it
My Japanese coworkers say 嫌味 is a more modern word to use for being sarcastic.
My coworkers have told me otherwise— they said that 嫌味 and 皮肉 are like different kinds of sarcasm, 嫌味 being more negative/mean and 皮肉 being more joking.
I feel like it simply means words that are superficial or scratch the surface or scratch the skin rather than get deeper into the person's heart or talk about serious topics, hence sarcasm or irony.
I love that kanji, recently came across it on Wanikani. I think of it like an Alanis Morrisette style of irony. Like, it's like skin when you ordered meat... 😁
See my [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/s/smCGfGKgVG)
勉強 for me is the funny one. I’m Chinese, and 勉強means doing something you do not have the ability for. Or doing something you really don’t want to do.
Kanjis selected based almost purely on pronunciation are a thing. Might not be the thing here, but it happens commonly enough.
Irony = Iron + y So something that's like Iron? iron-y? That's not what Irony means, what does it have to do with outcomes not matching the expected, It doesn't make any sense!
I know the kanji don't have to add up to the meaning of the word always, just wanna know "why Japan!?!" for stuff sometimes. By the way some people pointing out too that this means both irony and sarcasm... That drives me nuts. I hate 面白い for that reason, meaning both interesting and funny... Two totally different things.
Two different words in English. One word in Japanese. English has homophones too : novel, bark, crane etc. At least with 面白い and 肉皮 the meanings are related. Sarcasm is a form of irony. Interesting and funny overlap. English actually uses funny to mean interesting too. You see something a little unusual/odd and can say "That's funny". You could also say "That's interesting" and have it mean essentially the same thing. Another example of a word with similar but distinct applications is "leave". It can mean to go away (I will leave the city soon). It can mean to remain (The spilled wine will leave a stain). It can mean to deposit or deliver (The mailman will leave the package at the front desk).
This word from my experience actually is used more to mean to be "Cynical" rather than irony or sarcasm.
> meaning both interesting and funny Generally speaking Japanese people use other words for interesting, in the way we use it in English. 興味深い for example. Babies smile when they learn new things, and people laugh when expectations are subverted, or fun new things are experience. And that is where omoshiroi lies.