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Word of the Day: Offhand
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Now and then, I choose a word that is very hard to write about.
Offhand is one of those words.
I don’t know why I chose it other than it came up in a lesson, and I write about words that students ask me about.
When you make an offhand comment, you say something coolly and calmly without thinking that someone finds it offensive.
You also give the impression that you don’t care if it bothers someone or not.
The examples which come to mind to help you better understand what an offhand remark is are most of the comments made by Japanese politicians.
Hardly a day goes by without one politician or another saying something offhand that offends a few thousand people.
Yoshiro Mori was recently reported as saying a woman is working in his office who is so old she isn’t even a woman anymore.
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Let’s allow that to sink in for a moment.
This statement came from an 83-year-old man.
Here’s another example of an offhand comment to reinforce what it means.
Way back in 2007, Hakuo Yanagisawa, while giving a speech on the falling birth rate in Japan, described women as ‘birth-giving machines’ and ‘baby-making devices.’
Yep, he really did say that.
Some foreigners come to Japan and remember the cherry blossoms or their experience of climbing Mt. Fuji; I remember Hakuo Yanagisawa’s offhand comment.
This is what I mean. Offhand comments are made by people who don’t think and don’t care if what they say will hurt someone or not.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 68.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.