Nine and nine of ten and ten

Posted on September 24, 2014 by

In honor of September, a yojijukugo with some nines in it!

九分九厘
ku.bu.ku.rin

Literally: nine – part – nine – smaller part [1/10 of a bu]

Alternately: 99%. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Almost certainly.

Notes: There is some danger here due to 分 also meaning 1%, so that the phrase can be misread as “a 9.9% chance.” However, in this case 分 means “one part (in ten),” and from this the meaning of something almost guaranteed to happen is born.

Sorry for the tiny image size

Also apparently the name of a band!?

About Confanity

I love the written word more than anything else I've had the chance to work with. I'm back in the States from Japan for grad school, but still studying Japanese with the hope of becoming a translator -- or writer, or even teacher -- as long as it's something language-related.
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