Some cows give milk; this one says “Mu”

無為無能
mu.i.mu.nou

Literally: nothing – do/benefit – nothing – ability

Alternately: Not doing anything, and not able to do anything. A complete lack of action, and of ability to achieve anything significant. Idle and incompetent.

Notes: Keep in mind that despite the obvious application in contemporary American politics, in Japan this expression is most likely to be used about oneself, as a humble expression of modesty.

MuIMuNoubita

And then there’s this yutz.

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.
This entry was posted in Japanese, Yojijukugo and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s