Spray

Spray

When I heard the word “spray”, I immediately thought of a spray bottle. This was because the Japanese word “スプレー”, pronounced like “supurē”, which comes from “spray”, means only the spray bottle, not the mist itself. Well, technically speaking, it can mean the mist itself, but that is limited to “the mist that comes out of a spray”. As you may know, the English word “spray” means water in the form of fine mist-like particles, regardless of how it was produced.

There are other patterns similar to this, where a Japanese word is derived from “an English word with multiple meanings”, but it only has the meaning as a tool. The word “アイロン”, pronounced like “airon”, is one of those examples. It only means a clothing iron, but it comes from the English word “iron”, which of course means metal as well.

Any other good examples?