Quote:
Originally Posted by BowserJr
Hey I've been reading about the word tekitou, and I'm hearing mixed opinions on it. If you look it up in Kanji, it means suitable or appropriate, right? But here:
『FFVII』ではテキトーなことも言うが、『BC』では目的� �をピタリと当てるなど、並々ならぬ腕前を見せる。
It's written in kana, but is spelled like tekito. If I look it up in a dictionary in kana like that, nothing ever comes up. I see a lot of sites saying tekitou means "nonsense" or "random" and I was wondering if the difference was whether or not it's written in kana or something. Or are tekitou and tekito two separate words? If not, how can you tell which definition to use if they're both opposites?
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Good question for all intermediate learners!
In that sentence the word means "nonsense", which is almost the opposite of what most dictionaries will give you as its first and most important meaning.
As you stated, we often use kana, more specifically katakana, to write words when we use them for their colloquial meanings so the readers would "visually and instantly" understand what meaning it is being used for.
If the writer neglects to make that distinction, the reader still has the context to go by. With that sentence above, the が would have been the key word if テキトー had been written as 適当.