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I was wondering about this one recently. "Fuck" in English is famous for being applicable in a wide, wide range of circumstances (none of them formal).

What word in Japanese covers a wide spectrum of possible meanings and uses like "fuck" does. Does not have to be a rude/vulgar term.

Any suggestions?

EDIT: half of you seem to have missed the point of my question. I don't need a translation for "fuck", I want a word as versatile. Maji is pretty good but I would've thought there'd be more contenders. Admittedly it's a vague question, but one for my izakaya zatsugaku collection.

crunchyt
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  • kuso, seems quite similar to F. You do the research yourself from there ;) –  Jun 14 '11 at 14:23
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    It's a bit of a vague question: all "versatility of Fuck" jokes aside, the word is not *that* versatile: it is merely a very common interjection that has come to fit with pretty much any existing sentence, but it won't dramatically affect the meaning itself. As you may know, Japanese is not big on the overuse of profanity (even very harmless ones like ばか or くそ are reserved for big stuff), so an equivalent in this way is unlikely... – Dave Jun 14 '11 at 14:27
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    Shouldn't we write "fuck" as "fuck"? Or is this about some other word? – Kdansky Jun 14 '11 at 15:49
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    With @Kdanski on that... this is a language/linguistics forum: precision trumps misplaced prudishness and 'fuck' should be spelt out. Keeping the elided form in the title should be enough to spare easily-offended eyes while warning them of the horrors of explicit language contained therein. – Dave Jun 14 '11 at 17:44
  • @Dave: The term for the kind of word that can be added or removed almost anywhere without affecting the meaning is *expletive*. It is often confused with *obscenity*, *profanity*, etc since such words tend to be "bad words". – hippietrail Jun 15 '11 at 00:50
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    sounds like バカ and ちょう are candidates for the answer, but the question should be made wiki as there is no single answer to it. –  Jun 15 '11 at 01:49
  • @hippietrail: indeed. Although 'fuck' on its own is rather an interjection. 'fucking' would be the matching expletive :-) Perhaps @crunchy's question could be better rephrased as "Are there widely-used expletives in Japanese?" – Dave Jun 15 '11 at 02:42
  • @Dave: Yes I thought about putting "expletive" in the question but I thought that might add more confusion through it's association with "obscenity". Then again it made me think of a very common Japanese word that I think of as an expletive and is not rude, "ano" - but is it more like English "um" which would be thought of more as a noise than a word? – hippietrail Jun 15 '11 at 02:46
  • @Dave: Also on fuck vs fucking/fucked etc one could try to distinguish between "word" and "lemma" and "lexeme" and which one covers only a single form of the word as opposed to which covers all inflected or all derived forms of the verb as well. But those are technical words not everybody is familiar with. Perhaps the question should be reworded to clarify this/ – hippietrail Jun 15 '11 at 02:49
  • @hippietrail: I would say, given that the question already contains "F word" in its title, "expletive" can only bring down that association ;-) – Dave Jun 15 '11 at 03:02
  • @hippietrail: and regarding Japanese expletives (rude or not), this is a question I'd be very interested in (hence my recommending a thorough rewording that might invite more contributions)... I can't think of any really strong ones (similar to 'fuck'). But typical non-rude expletives could perhaps be some variations on 何 (なんか, なんと言う etc)... – Dave Jun 15 '11 at 03:05
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    “The four letter F word in English is famous for being applicable in a wide, wide range of circumstances […]” I do not think that this is true (as @Dave wrote in his first comment on this question), and the question does not really make sense. Voted to close as not a real question. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jun 15 '11 at 16:48
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    @Ito: I hear you however I wasn't asking for a rude word, just something widely used and possibly examples of it. WRT the claim by you and @Dave that it's not versatile, perhaps I can defer to Wikipedia on this one? "'Fuck' can be used as a verb, adverb, adjective, command, interjection, noun, and can logically be used as virtually any word in a sentence (e.g., "Fuck the fucking fuckers")." Cf: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck Perhaps instead you can help me improve the question, because it is a valid one (even if it turns out that "fuck" does not have an opposite number in Japanese. – crunchyt Jun 17 '11 at 14:41
  • I knew that you were not asking for a rude word, but I had no idea what you were asking for until I read your last comment. Are you asking for a word which can replace every word (or at least most words) in a sentence? – Tsuyoshi Ito Jun 18 '11 at 13:04
  • Hmm. 馬鹿な馬鹿が馬鹿にしてる。 – Kaz Sep 25 '12 at 22:34

7 Answers7

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I am surprised nobody mentioned: マジ ("maji")

Only used as an adverb, with the meaning of "fucking", for instance マジ寒い for "fucking cold".

Combinations can be done: チョウ寒い、マジで！

Nicolas Raoul
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  • I don't think マジ寒い can be translated as "fucking cold", but it's versatile and matches the questions' requirements. +1 –  Jun 15 '11 at 09:23
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    You can't really use マジ as interjection like クソ, but otherwise it's still plenty versatile. – deceze Jun 16 '11 at 01:29
  • Ok, the winner is マジ ... it doesn't mean "fuck" (and didn't need). I will now explore it's wide usage further. :D – crunchyt Jun 20 '11 at 00:47
  • @Nicolas Raoul: It's short for 真面目, or "seriously". You might say that because it isn't actually rude, you can use it in more places than "fuck". It's still highly informal though. – SuperElectric Aug 01 '11 at 22:58
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What about 「[微妙]{びみょう}」. It is used to express something not quite well. e.g. [今日]{きょう}行{い}ったレストランは[微妙]{びみょう}だった。 It is also used to say about something subtle. e.g. [微妙]{びみょう}な[色彩]{しきさい}が[施]{ほどこ}された[絵画]{かいが}. It is also used when you cannot make up your mind. e.g. [明日暇]{あしたひま}？ ん～[微妙]{びみょう}. It is also used for something unknown. e.g. [彼]{かれ}の[発言]{はつげん}で[微妙]{びみょう}な[空気]{くうき}が[流]{なが}れた。

rurouniwallace
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Teno
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I would say 馬鹿(バカ) is kind of like that. You could use like バカデカイ(** huge).

YOU
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What about ちょう? I've heard it used as an adverb, adjective and standing by itself. Or was that local slang of the people I was with?

Kdansky
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  • ちょう / 超 works. It literally and figuratively translates as "super" as in 超疲れた = super-tired, 超面白かった = super-fun, etc. – SuperElectric Aug 01 '11 at 23:00
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My Japanese isn't very good, but I've heard that 一応 can be used in a wide variety of contexts.

RegDwight
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Rodrigo Pará
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I once checked what is the longest article in the Green Goddess (Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary). It was for き【気】, which had 10 main meanings and a huge number of idioms. My denshi jiten even had it split in two, probably because it ran into some software length limitation.

I actually managed to find a copy of the article on the web just now: http://pastie.org/pastes/260480

Here's the list of main meanings:

1 〔精神･心･意識〕 spirit; (a) mind; (a) heart.
2 〔気質･性格〕 (a) nature; a disposition.
3 〔意向〕 a mind; an intention; 〔意志〕 will; 〔意欲〕 high [strong] motivation; 〔意気･気力〕 spirit(s).
4 〔気持ち･気分〕 one's feelings; a mood; (a) frame of mind.
5 〔関心〕 interest.
6 〔注意力･心遣い〕 care; consideration; attention.
8 〔雰囲気〕 an atmosphere; 〔精気〕 essence; spirit.
9 【中国哲学】 〔生命の根元･生命力〕 chi; ch'i; qi.
10 〔香気〕 fragrance; aroma; 〔風味〕 taste; 〔燻気〕 fumes.

Igor Skochinsky
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しまった？ i usually hear like あっ！しまった！ in situations that i would usually mean, "ow, fuck!"

rurouniwallace
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superfry
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    Despite the (admittedly poor) wording of the title, this CW is not about translations for the word 'fuck', but about finding expletives/interjections of similar versatility. – Dave Jun 18 '11 at 08:31
  • It comes from しまう so you should write　しまった. I personally think it works at answering the question, so +1 –  Jun 18 '11 at 12:13
  • Close, but not quite as versatile. しまった is closer to "damn". It can't be used as an adverb like "fuck". e.g. "This is fucking great!" – rurouniwallace Sep 25 '12 at 17:07