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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Malgas@beehaw.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneShy and Cute Rule
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    9 days 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.