• Malgas@beehaw.org
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      2 hours ago

      This is my first encounter with the word 万引き, and the fact I never would have expected it to mean “shoplifting” despite knowing both those kanji individually sent me down a bit of an etymology rabbit hole:

      Originally 間引き (まびき, “thinning out [seedlings]”), applied euphemistically to a store’s inventory. The pronunciation had shifted to まんびき by 1831, and 万 in the modern form is purely phonetic.