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Egui: One Japanese Word’s Journey from “Awful” to “Awesome!”
“Egui” in Japanese used to have a thoroughly negative meaning. Not anymore. Here’s when — and why — that changed.
By Jay Allen
Language is wonderful. As the constantly evolving product of the minds of millions or billions of people, there’s no way to predict when — and how — it’s going to change.
Japanese has undergone some titanic shifts — from the birth of the kana syllabaries to the shift in the literary world from kobun to the spoken vernacular. And it continues to undergo far more gradual shifts in meaning and usage.
As an example, we need look no further than what the youth of Japan have done to the word egui (エグい).
Young people agree: it’s cool to be egui
Originally, egui (えぐい) meant “harsh” or “astringent”. More particularly, it referred to anything that produced a harsh reaction or stimulus to your throat when eaten or swallowed. The expression comes from the verb えぐる, “to perturb”, with 喉をえぐる (nodo o eguru; make one’s throat hurt) being a standard phrase. The word dates back to Japan’s Heian Era in the form ゑぐし (egushi).
From this, egui took on its common secondary meaning of “terrible” or “awful”. That’s how many Japanese in their 40s and up understand the word to this day.
But Japan’s youth are using egui in the exact opposite sense.
Reporter Handa Shigehisa, who’s 44, noticed this at his son’s soccer game when other players shouted “egui! egui!” whenever someone made a nice play. This use of egui is closer to “killer!” or “awesome!”.
Somewhat dumbfounded and feeling out of touch with today’s youth, Handa set up shop outside of Nagano Station and did an informal survey. He asked people in their teens and 20s: do you see egui as a good thing? Or a bad thing?
Obviously, this wasn’t any sort of scientific study. But the results were clear: out of 31 people, only two saw egui as a negative word…
