罠英語・Trap words pt 2
Part 1 had some satisfying explanations for the etymology of trap words. This time it’s the opposite - we’ll be looking at some trap words that have unclear origins.
コーンフレーク → cornflakes ✅… but also → any breakfast cereal ✅
Though the word コーンフレーク is used to refer to cornflakes specifically, it is also used more generally to refer to any breakfast cereal at all. Researching to find evidence of this usage was difficult, despite its widespread usage. Every Japanese dictionary defines コーンフレーク as cereal made of flakes of corn, without so much as a mention of the common “misconception”. You get a hint of the reality of the common usage when you google 「コーンフレーク 意味」— three of the results on the first page are variations of 「シリアルとコーフレークの違いは何？」.
The best I can do for evidence is this video from Kevin’s English Room where they refer to various cereals like Froot Loops and Reese’s Puffs as コーンフレーク.¹
非常に代表的なアメリカのコーンフレークでございます
"This is an extremely typical American breakfast cereal."
Part of the silence here is due to Japanese speakers being generally a bit more linguistically prescriptivist than English speakers, especially when it comes to loan words. There seems to be this notion that the original English definition is the “correct” one - but this isn’t the case! The “correct” use of a word is simply one that conveys the intended meaning. That’s just how language evolves. It’s why “nonplussed” has come to mean “unconcerned” instead of its original opposite meaning. Not to mention, when a word is borrowed into another language, it is now a part of that language. It goes through phonetic changes to match the language's phoneme inventory and syllabic structure, gains its own meaning, and can play by the unconscious sound and grammar rules of the new language.² The Japanese word コーンフレーク and the English word cornflake are not the same word! And it’s ok for them to mean different things! I don’t think this sentiment is widely accepted by Japanese culture, which explains why it’s so hard to find a Japanese dictionary definition that defines コーンフレーク as “breakfast cereal”. (Jisho does though!³)
As far as its origins are concerned, I believe this is a simple case of genericisation (though I can't find any evidence to support that), similar to how we call all hook-and-loop fasteners "velcro".
ハンドル → handle ❌ → steering wheel ✅
This word is was also hard to find any etymology on. Even the best articles I could find are unsure about its origins. There are a couple of theories but nothing solid.
The word ハンドルバー for the handlebars of a bike may have been misinterpreted to mean “steering mechanism” rather than “horizontal pole to grab” and applied to cars as well.⁴ Then in standard Japanese fashion, the word was trimmed down to four morae, becoming ハンドル. Another article suggested that it originally came from the “handling” of a car. The wheel controls the handling, so 「ハンドルを操るホイール」 may have just been shortened to ハンドル.
テンション → tension ❌ → excitement ✅
テンション is often used in phrases like 「ハイテンション」 「テンションを上げる」 「テンションを下げる」, to mean the energy or vibes of a situation. This graph might help:
I did a lot of digging on this, and I couldn’t find any reliable sources or actual records of how テンション came to have this meaning. The best explanation I could find came from an unsourced yahoo answers question (lol), but there does seem to be a consensus: It seems to come from musical tension, specifically tension chords on guitar.⁵⁶⁷ The first use of テンション in this way may have come from bands playing at live concerts. “Tension” in a chord is an extra note that’s not a basic part of the chord.⁸ Apparently adding this extra sound causes a feeling of anticipation - it feels like the music is building up to a resolution, which gets people excited at a concert. Musicians would use the phrase 「テンションコードを上げる」, meaning “build excitement with tension chords”, which became simply 「テンションを上げる」, and this phrase was then adopted by the general population and taken out of its musical context, becoming a trap word!
