No relation to Indian spices

Or to gum!

我武者羅
ga.mu.sha.ra

Literally: oneself – warrior – person – gauze

Alternately: Fixated on a goal to the point of blinding oneself to everything else. Charging ahead without looking to see what else is coming or what lies in one’s wake. Madcap; reckless; frantic.

Notes: This one’s got an interesting etymology. It was originally 我 plus 貪 (musabori, from a verb meaning “to lust after,” “to devour greedily”). Phonetic drift turned gamusabori into gamusha, which kept the 我 and received the ateji 武者. Later on, the suffix ら was added – apparently in its function of expressing a condition or situation – and given its own ateji with 羅. It is therefore not inappropriate that the whole phrase may be found expressed in kana.

This four-character compound may be shortened to three, dropping the final 羅. Amusingly, a reckless person may be called a 我武者者 (gamusha mono).

GaMuShaMonoRa.jpg

A positive connotation can be found in the name of this pep-squad-themed performance troupe.

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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