22 New Japanese Words Added to Oxford English Dictionary
If you think some English words sound a bit Japanese, there's a simple explanation — it's because they are Japanese! And the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has now added 22 more Japanese words to its pages.
The OED has recorded Japanese words entering the English language as early as 1577. And the latest 22 have been added to 552 already in the dictionary.
Of those new words, half are food, including onigiri rice balls, okonomiyaki pancakes and takoyaki octopus balls.
"English borrows a large number of food terms from other languages, as English speakers often call dishes and ingredients by their original names in another language, rather than give them English ones," said the OED's Danica Salazar.
Salazar explained that the OED team chose the new words by looking at how long they have been used in English, as well as how frequently and widely used they are — and also took suggestions from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
One of the new terms is actually a "boomerang word" — a word that left English and came back in a new form.
The Japanese term katsu refers to fried and breaded meat or vegetables. But it's a shortened form of katsuretsu — a word originally taken from the English word "cutlet," a small slice of meat from the ribs or leg of an animal.
There are also a number of new art-related terms, such as kirigami, the Japanese art of folding and cutting paper into three-dimensional designs, and kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver or platinum.
Another new term is isekai, which literally means "other world." It's a genre of science fiction or fantasy in which the main character travels to a strange different world — such as in the Oscar-winning 2023 film The Boy and the Heron.
And between faster global communication and the popularity of Japanese food, Salazar says the process of borrowing Japanese words has only gotten faster.
