かかふ

Old Japanese

Etymology

From Proto-Japonic *kakapu.

Noun

かかふ (kakapu)

1. a rag
   • c. 759, Man’yōshū, book 5, poem 892:

     錦毛奈伎布可多衣乃美留乃其等和和気佐我礼流可可布能尾肩爾打懸

     WATA mo naki₁ NUNOkataGI₁NU mi₁ru no₂ go₂to₂ wawake₂ sagareru kakapu nomi₂ KATA ni uti kake₂

     I have nothing to wear on my shoulders but a rag of a sleeveless robe, without any padding, which hangs down, full of holes, like a piece of seaweed.

Usage notes

In addition to the singular attestation in the Man'yōshū (c. 759), the word is also attested in Early Middle Japanese in the Shinsen Jikyō (898-901):

• 㡜 残帛也 也不礼加加不

  Xiè; a worn cloth; yaburekakafu

After that, the word would be completely absent throughout the history of the Japanese written language, until reappearing in a text dated to the 17th century and another from 1848, apparently with just the meaning "a cloth or clothing that is stuffed with cotton". Peripheral dialects retain the word, albeit with different meanings and/or phonology; only Hachijō appears to fully preserve both meanings, while Ryukyuan dialects merely preserve the "rag" meaning. Due to the aforementioned apparent lack of a meaning "rug" in such texts, the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten gives the following note "歴史的かなづかいは未詳。「かかう」と同じ語か ("the historical kana form is unknown; possibly the same as kakau^[sic]")".

かかわ (kakawa, historical kana かかは (kakafa)), almost certainly derived from this word, is a hapax legomenon attested in the Shūchūshō (1185-1187).

Both words can be found in the Genkai (1884), one of the first modern monolingual Japanese dictionaries.

Descendants

• Hachijō: かこう (kakō)
• >? Japanese: かこう (kakō, obsolete or dialect)
• ⇒ Japanese: かかわ (kakawa, obsolete)