this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
1756 points (98.6% liked)

Science Memes

12375 readers
1964 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

One is the actual disembowelment one is the ritual IIRC

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yes I guess harakiri is the act of disemboweling yourself and seppuku is the ceremony surrounding it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I named one of our dumber work projects 'project seppeku' once. Boss was not amused when someone told him what it meant, but it went undiscovered for longer than I would have imagined, which simultaneosly made me happy and hurt my feelings.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not quite but I can see why people think so. Both words stem from the same Kanji pair: 腹切. Abdomen cut.

But one is read natively (harakiri) with an informal and colloquial feel to it and the other uses borrowed Chinese readings (seppuku) that makes it sound more formal/ritualistic to be used in formal settings. But they mean the same thing and both refer to the ritual.

A similar example is Japan's own name: 日本. It's usually read as "nihon" but has a special, formal reading of "nippon".

Lemminary to Science [email protected] • nuked from orbit English6•

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just want a tantō that moans as I commit seppuku.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just make sure the source code gets posted to Github

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Commit on github before committing suicide!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Harikari = seppuku. They're even written with the same kanji characters.

Oh, and harikari usually has a helper.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

To really put this to rest:

Harakiri and Seppuku both literally mean abdomen/stomach cutting. Those who know some Japanese may recognize hara from the common phrase hara hetta which means you are hungry (literally, your stomach is decreasing in size or diminishing). Kiri means cut.

腹: hara 切: kiri

Seppuku simply reverses those kanji: 切腹

Why are they pronounced differently? Harakiri is a native Japanese word, using more traditional Japanese pronunciation Seppuku is a borrowing of middle Chinese roots: setsu from Middle Chinese tset meaning to cut, and fuku from Middle Chinese pjuwk, related to modern Mandarin fūk, referring to your abdomen.

So, setsufuku was shortened to seppuku where the Ps represent a stop and skipping of part of the word.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh, and harikari usually has a helper.

Other way around. Seppuku is the whole ritual, which includes the helper. But if you just gut yourself out in the woods with no ceremony, it's harikiri

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

it’s harikiri

eh, only if it comes from the harikiri region of france tho.

otherwise it's just sparkling disembowelment.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago