otsu

English

Etymology

From Japanese 乙 otsu "second".

Adjective

otsu

1. (linguistics) In Old Japanese, one of two sets of vowels of uncertain pronunciation which fell together in modern Japanese.
   • 1991: Christopher Seeley, A History of Writing in Japan

     Later—during the ninth century—the kō and otsu groups did come to be used interchangeably.

   • 2001: John R. Bentley, A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose

     He rejects the claim of Matsumoto (1984) that the kô and otsu -o- vowels are in complementary distribution, and therefore these two vowels are allophones of a single vowel.

See also

• otsu-rui
• kô/kō
• kô-otsu/kō-otsu

Anagrams

• oust
• outs
• Tsou