One of the buzzwords of 2013 in Japan was the rather bizarre word 激おこぷんぷん丸. Originating from Japanese schoolgrils, the word made its way onto the internet and spawned an intriging new meme. Let’s break the word down!
激 (げき) – Extremely
おこ – Angry
ぷんぷん – Puffed-up Cheeks
丸 (まる) – Little Boy
Together with the 顔文字 (smilie) ٩(๑`^´๑)۶ , we have a word that conveys super anger, in somewhat of a cute fashion.
Often in Japanese anger is expressed, both in writing and in person, by a puffing-up of the cheeks. The mimetic word ぷんぷん best encapsulates this emotion. In the buzzword 激おこぷんぷん丸, it’s used to emphatic effect in order to convey an increased level of anger. You can just imagine the hot air building up inside ready to burst out, right?
激 is the Japanese word for ‘extremely’ and can be appended to many different words in order to increase their potency. おこ
is a shortened form of 怒る (おこる) – to be angry. The 丸 at the end means ’round’ in regular speech, but here it most likely represents the suffix sometimes added to little boys’ names in traditional Japanese. The totality of the word then can probably be best represented by a little boy puffing up his cheeks and letting off steam in anger. No 3 in the picture below.
But what are these other stages!?
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Image: Pufferfish, Shutterstock
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