斯々然々
I came across an interesting-sounding word while watching episode 8 of Youkai Gakkou no Sensei Hajimemashita! :
The anime was even kind enough to provide an explanation, and I thought that was funny.
Usage
斯々然々 (かくかくしかじか) is often used in media as a practical phrase that an author can use in place of some long explanation that the reader/viewer might already be aware of. For example, imagine the following situation :
- Scene 1 : Something happens to character A
- Scene 2 : Character B shows up and asks what happened
- Scene 3 : Character A explains the situation
Now, the author may make "Character A" go through the whole song and dance of explaining the situation (which the readers most likely don't want), or they may simply make "Character A" say something like「まぁ。。かくかくしかじかでこうなちゃった」
It can also be used (though I am not sure how commonly) in real-life conversations. For example, you can use it whenever you want to explain yourself without revealing any details. Here are some examples1 :
- 斯々然々ありまして…離婚する事になりました。
- 斯々然々の事情があって、退職する事になった。
- 斯々然々あって、遅れちゃったの。ごめんね。
The fact that the anime felt the need to explain what this phrase meant seems to suggest that it is not often used in everyday life.
Pop Culture
かくかくしかじか has been used as a title for a certain manga. It is also the name of a deer mascot character used by Daihatsu for advertisments and such. This is probably a pun, \(\stackrel{\tiny しか}{\footnotesize 鹿}\) being the kanji for deer.
History
In the anime, it was also mentioned that かくかくしかじか was used in the 万葉集 (Man'yōshū), an 8th century anthology of Japanese poetry. Both かくかく and しかじか are archaic ways of saying こうだ/このように2 and so it seems that people of the time decided to combine them to create the かくかくしかじか that we know of today. It is one of the few phrases from Old Japanese to have persisted all the way to the modern age.