下駄

See also: 下馱 and 下驮

Japanese
下駄 (geta): a pair of geta.
Kanji in this term
下 駄
げ
Grade: 1		 た
Grade: S
on’yomi

Etymology

A surface analysis suggests a Japanese coinage of Middle Chinese-derived components, as a compound of 下 (ge, “lower; under”) +‎ 駄 (ta, “loading; carrying; footwear”).

Historical usage suggests a shift form older term 足駄 (ashida, “clogs”, later, referring more specifically to “tall clogs” in contrast to the “short clogs” referenced by the term geta), itself deriving from 足 (ashi, “foot”) + 板 (ita, “board”)[1][2][3] from the even older practice of wearing flat pieces of wood on one's feet when working in the paddies to keep from sinking into the mud, similar in principle to snowshoes. This latter footwear persisted in use into the 20th century as 田下駄 (ta-geta, literally “paddy geta”).

The historical derivation indicates that the 駄 character's “footwear” sense, which is specific to Japanese and is not found in Chinese sources, could have arisen from phonetic ateji (当て字) usage in the terms ashida and geta.

Pronunciation

Noun

下駄 (hiragana げた, rōmaji geta)

  1. geta: a kind of wooden clog with at least one, more commonly two, stilts or “teeth”
  2. the geta symbol, 〓 (Unicode value 3013): a typographic mark indicating unavailability of a glyph, such as when a character cannot be displayed on a computer; so called for the similarity to a geta clog footprint
  3. (go) a stone placed not adjacent to the opponent's stone, but in such a way as to block the opponent's formation from escaping

Derived terms

See also

References
  1. 2006, 大辞林 (Daijirin), Third Edition (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Sanseidō, →ISBN
  2. “下駄”, in 日本大百科全書：ニッポニカ (Nippon Dai Hyakka Zensho: Nipponica, “Encyclopedia Nipponica”)‎ (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Shogakukan, 1984
  3. “下駄”, in ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 (Buritanika Kokusai Dai Hyakka Jiten: Shō Kōmoku Jiten, “Encyclopædia Britannica International: Micropædia”)‎ (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Britannica Japan Co., Ltd., 2014

Further reading
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