Emaki · all 1,500 words

駄目

だめ

no good

Mnemonic

駄 worthless and 目 a point on the board. In go it is a square that does nobody any good. Damn: no good at all, and it kept that meaning when it left the game: だめ.

Worth knowing

Shares 駄 with 無駄, wasteful. だめ is a verdict on a thing or a person, むだ is effort that went nowhere.

Built from

packhorse, worthless
馬 horse + 大 big
eye
An eye stood on end, the lines of the lid across it.

Words sharing these kanji

wasteful, useless eye purpose, aim, object to aim for serious, earnest to stand out, to be conspicuous outward appearance to wake (up), to come to one's senses target, goal

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Emaki is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Kaishi 1.5k or its authors. The word, reading and meaning come from the Kaishi 1.5k deck, used with their permission. The mnemonic, the note and the kanji breakdown are original work, published under CC BY-SA 4.0.