What does “pick up” mean in Japanese context?

17 comments

1. Recent. New. Recommend.

   Ya know what it is already. Good job getting those context clues.

2. I’ve always read it like a pick up game of {basketball, soccer, football}. Something you’re encouraged to engage in without thinking too much. A casual thing. Just Do It!

3. It’s what the news outlet has “picked up” for you as it is one of the bigger headlines.

4. Hot and new

5. Featured

6. Higher chance to pull from the gacha banner. And by higher, I mean a whopping +0.25%!

7. It is like “Hey, check this out!”

8. “Featured” (not always, but often, new).

   Not sure of the etymology

9. I’ve always heard “pick up” being used by Japanese as “grasp an idea”.

10. I always hear Japanese people speaking English use it as “choose”. Jisho.org also says “choose” and “select”. [Jisho entry for “pick up”](https://jisho.org/search/%E3%83%94%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%97)

11. My colleague seem to use it to mean taking up something, as in, “I will pick up this issue.”

12. The nuance comes from the visual image of a bunch of “things” sitting around and you (or the store manager, etc.) decides to “pick up” one of them and pay that one special attention. Those things can be headlines, songs, fruits, shoes, etc. Depending on the context.

    This is one of those cases where the mental/cultural framing of a metaphor is so different between English and Japanese. So my advice is not to think of this as an English world “pick up”, but fully think of it as a Japanese word ピックアップ. This tends to reduce the internal dissonance when trying to figure out what does this word mean.

13. Pick up, worth picking up (to look at/read), picked out (for you), selected, featured, highlighted

14. Technically it’s the featured item.

15. I’ve been in Japan too long. I fully thought this was normal English!

16. It means “hey, look, this word sounds like English! Isn’t it cool?”

17. 取り上げる。Pick up.