Ko etymology discussion

    Keywords: Ko

Ko seemingly is a buddhist term (from sanskrit kalpa) describing "an enormous passage of time, the next thing to eternity." (Source: Kawabata's Master of Go, ISBN 0-679-76106-3, footnote 39)

The original Chinese word ko means to rob. (Source: [ext] Go History at yutopian.com)

However, the Japanese term ko literally means "threat" (which means a ko threat would be redundant :) )

What? I thought it meant "eternity", i.e. the same as in the sanskrit and so forth.

exswoo That's the secondary meaning of the same kanji. A ko situation would involve both of those things, but I personally prefer to concentrate the threat def. more so than the eternity(well, more like a "a very long time" than eternity) def., but I guess you can go with what you like. :)


iopq: According to an appendix in Lasker's book, it's "aptitude or cleverness."

Malweth: This is presumably taken from Korschelt's 1880 work on go. Arthur Smith makes mention of this mistranslation in TheGameOfGoTheNationalGameOfJapan/RulesOfPlay#100 in which Smith uses the translation "Threat."

It is interesting to note that the Chinese character 劫 is jie2, take by force, coerce; disaster (from this [ext] dictionary). This corresponds better with the translation "Threat"

The translation aligns with the situation of Ko fairly well... describing not the reason for the rule (eternity), but the required action.


The resolution of this discussion can be inserted in the ko page.


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