Talk:ぼて

Derivation, senses

@Suzkaze-c, anyone else --

Poking around in the search results at Nihon Jiten, I find suggestions that this term might have dialectal origins, perhaps in the Kansai region. Nihon Jiten doesn't include any date information, however, so I'm not sure when each form may have appeared. The KDJ shows some of that over at Kotobank -- for instance, ぼとぼて doesn't show up in texts until 1900, suggesting that this is an innovation based on older ぼて. But then again, if this were a low-register, non-prestige dialect term, it might be much older than its first text appearance.

Nihon Jiten's 関西弁 entry for ぼてぼて and possibly standard-Japanese entry for ぼてぼて point to a meaning similar to "bulgingly, plumply, fatly". This seems to fit semantically with the meaning of ぼてぼて茶.

"ぼて" Searching Kotobank for ぼて-related entries turns up things like 腹ぼて (harabote, “big-bellied”, Kotobank, dated 1830–1844), or ぼてれん (boteren, “big-bellied; big and round and plump”, Kotobank, dated to 1707).

The meanings all cluster around a base idea of "plump, round". I can see how this might shift semantically to "round basket"; I suppose it's possible the meaning may have shifted the other direction, but somehow that seems less likely.

The oldest sense for just-plain-ぼて as listed here is dated to 1727, but as a contraction of 棒手振り (bote furi). That term is dated to 1661. The ぼて here does seem like it could be just a shortening arising from 棒 + 手振り -- but then again, the reading ぼうてふり is only dated to 1675, later than the ぼてふり reading and raising the possibility that 棒手 is ateji, such that the ぼうて reading was a hypercorrection or spelling-based reading.

Findings to date. Any further information would be welcome. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:55, 1 October 2020 (UTC)