{"id":1967,"date":"2009-02-23T23:46:59","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T14:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/?p=1967"},"modified":"2009-02-23T23:49:29","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T14:49:29","slug":"surprising-etymology-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/02\/23\/surprising-etymology-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprising Etymology of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;m the last Japanese student on earth to discover that, but learning the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tycoon\">Japanese etymology of the English word &#8220;tycoon&#8221;<\/a> today felt like a mini-epiphany.<\/p>\n<p>It was both rather unexpected and yet blindingly obvious in retrospect: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Taikun\">\u5927\u541b [&#8216;taikun&#8217;]<\/a> was the title used by the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shogun\">Shogun<\/a> in his relations with foreign dignitaries.<\/p>\n<p>As a funny sidenote: \u300c\u541b\u300d[&#8216;kun&#8217;], which I believe used to be a term of honour (&#8220;Master&#8221; etc.) is nowadays mostly used in Japanese to address young schoolboys (come to think of it, <em>exactly<\/em> as the English word &#8216;master&#8217;). Which would make the literal meaning of \u5927\u541b to be &#8220;Big boy&#8221;&#8230; Not quite the most imposing title you could find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;m the last Japanese student on earth to discover that, but learning the Japanese etymology of the English word &#8220;tycoon&#8221; today felt like a mini-epiphany. It was both rather unexpected and yet blindingly obvious in retrospect: \u5927\u541b [&#8216;taikun&#8217;] was the title used by the Shogun in his relations with foreign dignitaries. As a funny [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}