Korigatachi

    Keywords: Go term

Japanese Go term, meaning Overconcentrated Shape.

Often it is stated that this is literally frozen shape.

Fhayashi:That would be ko-o-ri gatachi, while I've seen it written in the Fujisawa Tesuji Dictionary as ko-ri gatachi, in katagana. I suspect the kori refers to 'cramped', which seems to fit the usage (in the aforementioned dictionary, at least).

John F. Fhayashi is correct, Koru is used of congealing, clotting, gettting stiff shoulders, etc. Kooru (freeze) is a separate though probably cognate verb.

Bill: Shall we change it to cramped shape?

Somebody: The confusion arises from rendering both "korigatachi" and "kōrigatachi" (which is a cute way to spell "koorigatachi") as "korigatachi". Since this happens for all words (e.g. "jozu" is not a word in Japanese, "jōzu" is), some confusion is to be expected. There are many words where this matters a lot, e.g. "fūrin" means a wind bell, but "furin" means adultery.

Bob Myers: Not exactly. There is no Japanese word which would be transliterated as "kōrigatachi", which, at the risk of pedantry, is not a "cute way" to spell "koorigatachi", but rather an alternative transliteration of the same non-existent Japanese word. The only place this word exists is in the minds of some non-native speaking go players who imagined, when they saw the transliteration "korigatchi", that it must involve the word "kōru" which they knew.

An amplification on the meaning of koru. As John says, the physical meaning is to grow stiff (I'm talking about shoulders, folks), but by extension it means to be fixated on something, concentrate overly much on something (also be absorbed in something, be fascinated by something). This more abstract meaning might be useful in understanding the thrust of the Japanese term.


This is a copy of the living page "Korigatachi" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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