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In an email I recently received from Japan, the first sentence contained an intriguing compound:
お元気に活躍されている様子嬉しく存じます。
O-genki ni katsuyaku sarete iru yōsu ureshiku zonjimasu.
I’m happy to know you appear to be healthy and doing well.
Actually, before 活躍する intrigued me, it stumped me, because I didn’t know 躍. Then I looked it up and discovered this great breakdown:
活躍する (katsuyaku suru: to flourish, do well, be actively engaged) lively + to leap!
The first character, 活, means “active, lively, energetic, moving” here. All that makes sense in the context of the sentence.
But 躍 involves leaping?! I didn’t expect that. In truth, I don’t do a great deal of leaping, so I’m glad to find that I have somehow accomplished that in the parallel universe of kanji.
(Speaking of parallel universes, a friend just emailed to say that he saw me on TV a few days ago! Strange how I could have made my way inside his TV and had a presence there for a split second without having any idea! He had seen me at the Lunar New Year celebration, where I had my “Fun with Kanji” table. More on that experience at the link.)
My First Attempt at Peddling Kanji in the Real World …
Turns out, I’ve briefly mentioned 躍 in these pages before. When we looked at YAKU eons ago, 躍 made an appearance, because its yomi are YAKU and odo(ru).
Odo(ru), huh? Studying the shape of 躍, I thought maybe it bore some semantic relationship to 曜 (day of the week), the centerpiece of words such as 月曜日 (getsu-yōbi: Monday).
But no, 躍 is actually closer to 踊, in that both have the kun-yomi of odo(ru). They have similar meanings, too. Whereas 躍る means “to leap, jump, bound,” 踊る means “to dance.”
I like the irrepressible feeling of kun-kun compounds in which 躍 appears:
踊り込む (odorikomu: to jump into, rush into)
to jump + to move inward
躍り上がる (odoriagaru: to spring up, leap to one’s feet)
to leap + up
For some reason, the expression “Leaping Lizards!” just came to mind. Is there any language stranger than English?
With the on-yomi of YAKU, 躍 also appears in some fun compounds:
躍進 (yakushin: making rapid progress, progressing by leaps and bounds) to leap + to make progress
Quick quiz: Just last week we saw the second kanji. Which word contained 進?
飛躍 (hiyaku: to leap, jump; to leapfrog (over a problem))
to leap + to leapSounds rather onomatopoetic, like the sound one might make while leaping: hiiiiiiyaaaaaku! We saw this compound in May.
跳躍 (chōyaku: jumping, leaping, springing) to leap up + to leap
Both characters have a foot (足) on the left side. If this compound could talk, it might say, “I have two left feet!”
You can also read this as a kun-kun compound:
跳ね踊る (haneodoru: to prance, frisk about)
to leap up + to leapWhat fun! Such a lot of springiness and friskiness in the air!
躍起 (yakki: excitement, enthusiasm, desperation)
to move as if leaping with excitement + to be stirred upThe first two meanings of this word are so positive! What happened? How did it slide into desperation? Sounds like the sad narrative of a relationship. Two people meet: great excitement! On the second meeting, they’re still enthusiastic, but the initial excitement has faded. And by the third date? There’s a desperate feeling in the air: how do I get out of this?!
A native speaker explained this third meaning to me a little differently! He said, “I would define it as ‘making a desperate effort.’ That is, 躍起 implies that a person is so enthusiastic about something that he tries very hard, perhaps looking desperate to others.”
Well, I hope you’re feeling 躍起 (and I don’t mean desperate) about the prospect of a Verbal Logic Quiz!
