White Rabbit Press Kanji Flash Cards

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Lazy Sabotage

彼らはいつも学校をサボっています。 They skip school all the time. Jim Breen's Dictionary

Did you know that the verb さぼる (to loaf, to be lazy, to play truant) and the noun さぼり (lazy git) originated from the French sabotage? I guess sabotage originally meant to sabotage the profits of the bosses by deliberately working slowly. But in its Japanese incarnation it simply means being a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing, layabout, skiver. An interesting example of how Japanese adopts foreign words and subtly warps them.

There are more さぼる examples up here on SPACEALC.

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