Quiz on things whose names differ between the past and now. Differences between old terms and modern terms.

toilet

Gofujo is an old way of referring to the toilet. It’s a euphemistic expression formed by adding the honorific go to fujo, meaning an unclean place, to avoid direct wording. It was a refined euphemism used to circumvent blunt expression and was reportedly used mainly by women at the time. The toilet was also called setsuin or kawaya, among other names.

couple

“Avec” comes from the French preposition meaning “with.” In the Showa era, “abekku” was commonly used as a noun to refer to a pair of lovers, but nowadays it’s more common to use the English-derived “couple.”

denim

In the past, jeans were abbreviated and called “Jīpan” in Japanese, but these days they’re more often referred to by the material name, “denim.” There’s also a theory that the term comes from the pants worn by American soldiers, who were called “GI.”

leggings

What used to be called “spats” is now generally referred to as “leggings.” They are highly elastic garments that fit snugly to the legs, and the term change became established following the trend in the late 2000s.

Leopard

The term “leopard print” comes from leopard, which means hyō (leopard) in English. Nowadays, it’s more commonly called leopard print than hyō print.

hectopascal

The unit of atmospheric pressure used to be “millibars (mb),” but to standardize with international norms, Japan switched to “hectopascals (hPa)” on December 1, 1992. The numerical values themselves remain the same: 1 millibar = 1 hectopascal.

Note

In the past, bound sheets of paper were called “chōmen.” You can still see remnants of this in words like “gakushū-chō” (study notebook) and “renraku-chō” (communication notebook). Today, it’s generally called a “note” or “notebook.”