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frantic but not certain death

Nichinan, 2025.12.28

I've found another funny word in Japanese. It's "frantic". What makes it funny is that the kanji that make up the word separately are 'certain' and 'death'. Welcome to the vocabulary, "frantic"!

必死

I've always liked the kanji for 'death' for some reason. The kanji for 'certain' looks like the kanji for 'heart' with a slash through it, not really sure what they were thinking when they dreamed that up.