Once upon a time, I did RTK and I failed to learn 却. The RTK keyword for 却 is "instead" which is stupid hard to remember. I tried making up a mnemonic story but "instead" is one of those abstract words that defies visualization.
None of the Koohii stories worked. The WaniKani keyword "contrary" was no better, and their mnemonics never clicked with me.
So I looked up vocabulary using 却. Only one word seemed to fit the RTK and WaniKani keywords:
- 却って – on the contrary; rather; instead; all the more.
But there were a whole list of words that seemed to follow a pattern:
- 冷却 – cooling; refrigeration
- 焼却 – incineration; destroy by fire
- 売却 – selling off; disposal by sale; sale
- 忘却 – lapse of memory; forgetting completely; (consigning to) oblivion
I decided that 却 meant "-completely" when used as a suffix. Now, "-completely" is also a really stupid keyword, but apparently, "cool completely", "burn completely", "sell completely" and "forget completely" really worked for me.
Flashforward to today. I am doing the N2 Tango deck and get かえって, which is 却って, but I guess no one uses the kanji. Ideally, I should just memorize the kana version and move on to the next card, but かえって really looks like the -て form of かえる, and it's going to bug me if I don't follow the breadcrumbs.
First, 却る is not a word. But 反って is another form of 却って, and 反る is another form of 返る, which has these definitions:
- to return; to come back; to go back
- to turn over
- to become extremely; to become completely (after the -masu stem of a verb)
So it seems, かえって might have come from the 2nd definition.
But it was the 3rd definition that caught my attention, reminding me of the "-completely" keyword I made up for 却. And this definition doesn't seem to be related to either 返 or 反.
So now I'm thinking maybe 却る used to be a word with the 3rd definition but got gobbled up by 返る. Or maybe it's just a coincidence.
Another coincidence: I was worrying that かえって might have come from the 1st and not the 2nd definition of 返る. I could see how either one could give a sense of "reverse" that goes into かえって. Then I realized I knew a word for "reverse" — 逆 (ぎゃく) — which sounds a lot like the on'yomi of 却 (きゃく).
by japh0000