Wednesday, April 17, 2019

word choice - 水疱 vs 火脹れ vs 水脹れ vs 肉刺


While hitchhiking from Tokyo to Sapporo in the past couple of days I devloped a few blisters on the soles of my feet. I like to learn my vocabulary based on my experience so looked up "blister" but found several words and no way to choose between them:




  • すいほう (水疱)

  • みずぶくれ (水脹れ, 水膨れ, 水ぶくれ)

  • ひぶくれ (火脹れ, 火膨れ, 火ぶくれ)

  • まめ (肉刺)


I'm assuming the first, 水疱, is a borrowing from Chinese.


The next two appear to be native Japanese terms and each have several variant spellings but share one orthogonal difference, one based on water 水 and the other on fire 火.


The final one I learned only a day or so after originally asking this question.


Could the first term be a general one for all kinds of blisters? What of the next two, I can imagine that some kinds of blisters are caused by burns, but what of the 水 words?



Are they for different kinds of blisters? Which is correct for the kinds of blisters I have?


Since I'm asking, which of the spelling variants should I use when writing these terms?




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