What does orz mean?

orz, a posture emoticon representing a kneeling, bowing, or comically fallen over person.

“Orz" was often seen on one of the big bulletin boards in Japan, “2 channel (currently 5 channel)". Recently, it has been used a lot in e-mails, texts, and SNSs.

As for how to read this word, it is okay to read the alphabet as “O-R-Z” as it is, but actually, it is also read as follows.

Oozu（おーず） Oruzu（おるず） orutsu（おるつ） Gakkushi（がっくし） Gakkari（がっかり） Shitusitai Zenkutsu（失意体前屈）

This is a letter born from AA (ASCII art: a picture made of letters), and because of that, the name itself does not exist. However, it became a little inconvenient during communication, so various people seem to have given various names.

In general, many people would understand what it means when just hearing “O-R-Z" or “Oozu".

So what does “orz” mean?

This “orz” is not an abbreviation for anything.

It might just be an esoteric word until you know what it means. But once you have got it, you would say “Oh, I see!"

“O" in “orz" is the head, “R” is the arm and torso, “Z” is also the torso, with the legs folded.

In other words, “orz” represents a person with his head on the ground.

Now that you know what it means, you can start seeing it as a person, right? And the meaning is as follows, it represents the state of the body and emotions.

it’s over now··· Disappointment Shocked Prostrate to apologize

In other words, when someone writes this ASCII art, it shows that he / she is disappointed, shocked, depressed, unable to recover, and wants to apologize.

That is the “dogeza（どげざ：土下座）” pose in Japan. At this point, you see it only like a person, don’t you?

“Orz”, which instantly looks like an abbreviation of some English word, was born in Japan and has recently begun to be used in other countries.

Originally, on a personal news site and community site around 2002, when someone asked a question about the cable, they responded with “＿|￣|○" to represent the cable layout using letters.

Among the people who saw it, it became a topic of “It looks like a human is kneeling”, and it became a topic on another page of the site.

Then it changed to “orz", which is a combination of alphabets because the letters are easy to type. Since 2004, its usage has expanded to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.

These are some examples of this emoticon.

Kinou kanojo ni suppokasareta …. orz. 昨日（きのう）彼女（かのじょ）にすっぽかされた・・・orz。 She stood me out last night … orz.

Benkyo shinakute mo shiten wa daijoubu dato omotte itanoni, dame datta … orz. 勉強（べんきょう）しなくても大丈夫（だいじょうぶ）だと思（おも）っていたのに、ダメだった・・・orz。 I thought I would be all right with the exam without revising, but I was totally wrong … orz

Kongetsu, kinketsu dakara kanojo to de-to dekinai yo … orz. 今月（こんげつ）、金欠（きんけつ）だから彼女（かのじょ）とデートできないよ・・・orz。 I can’t have a date with my girlfriend this month as I am skint … orz.

Shuuden ni norikokuta … orz. 終電（しゅうでん）に乗（の）り遅（おく）れた・・・orz。 I just missed the last train … orz

Kinou, meccha orz na koto ga atte sa … 昨日（きのう）、めっちゃorzなことがあってさ・・・。 I had something orz yesterday.

Uchino baito, hito yamesugi orz. うちのバイト、人（ひと）辞（や）めすぎorz。 How many people have been leaving my part-time workplace?

Kyou no nomikai ikenai, shigoto isogasisugi de orz dayo. 今日（きょう）の飲（の）み会（かい）行（い）けない、仕事（しごと）忙（いそが）しすぎでorzだよ。 I can’t go to today’s drinking party my work is too busy which “orz"es me.

Gomen! Renraku suruno wasureteta orz. ごめん！連絡（れんらく）するの忘（わす）れてたorz。 (This is used in the sense of apology, but it is a slang, so it is better not to use it for your boss or client)

There are many derivatives of “orz”. These are some of them.

＿|￣|○ （facing to the right） ○|￣|＿ （facing to the left） ￣|＿|○ (facing to the right and lying on his back) ○|＿|￣ （facing to the left and lying on his back)

STO (facing to the right) OTL (facing to the left) OTZ (facing to the left)

sto szo (facing to the right) orz (facing to the left) or2 (facing to the left)

no (facing to the right) on (facing to the left) ou (upside down facing to the left) uo (upside down facing to the right)

“Orz" has a big head, “Or2" has a big bottom, and, “prz” has a Regent hairstyle.

Also, someone said that “.org" looked like a person standing and bowing.

There is an example of playing with this ASCII art;

A: “I’m sorry, I can’t join the drinking party this evening as I just realized I had a shift tonight….”

B: “Beheaded! o/rz Supa! (スパッ：slashing sound) o…rz (I’ll leave it to your imagination what has just happened…..)

Yes, it looks a little cruel, but this is an interesting part of ASCII art. You can only send such a joke to someone who understands this kind of humor.

Five words just as hard to figure out as kanji.

The Internet has a language of its own. Words like LOL and WTF are common enough that even our grandparents know them, but others like TL;DR (“too long; didn’t read”) and SMH (“shake my head”) can still mystify people until they look them up in Urban Dictionary.

And the same thing goes for Japanese. The Japanese Internet has developed a bit of a dialect of its own, and even if you can read and write regular Japanese no problem, you’re still bound to run into a few words, phrases, and symbols that leave you feeling stumped.

That’s why today we’re counting down the top five indecipherable Japanese Internet slang words. It’s dangerous to go into the Japanese Internet alone; take this!

So let’s get to it! Starting off with…

Honorable Mention: “www” and ワロタ (“warota”)

PAKUTASO

Ah yes, the Japanese versions of LOL. How could we not start with these? They’re only an honorable mention because they’re relatively well known across the Internet, but just in case you’ve never seen them before, here’s the breakdown:

The first one, “www,” is any number of w’s after each other. The “w” stands for warau (笑う) meaning “to laugh.”

▼ As you can see in this example tweet, the number of w’s can vary (translation below).

The other one, warota, comes from the same word warau (笑う) to laugh, conjugated into its past-tense form waratta. Waratta gets changed to warata, then warota.

You can also see warosu and warotasu as alternative spellings sometimes, though they all mean roughly the same thing. And since warota and its many alternative forms are a little longer than just “www,” I’d say it’s okay to translate it as ROFL in a lot of circumstances.

▼ Just like in English, warota (here in katakana) likes to team up with its friend “www” for extra LOL-ing/ROFL-ing.

#5. orz

PAKUTASO

The first official item on the list of indecipherable Internet slang words is also one of the strangest: orz. What makes it so odd? Well, it’s the fact that you don’t actually pronounce it at all.

That’s right, you don’t read this one out loud as “oars” or “oh ar zee” or anything like that. Instead “orz” is essentially just ASCII art representing a person bowing down in apology/respect. The “o” is the head, the “r” is the hand on the ground, and the “z” is the bent legs.

▼ Here’s a horribly-drawn picture to help illustrate “orz.”

©SoraNews24

▼ An example orz apology from Twitter: “Sorry! I was jet-lagged and couldn’t wake up orz. But it was lucky to see you at the end!”

Just like most Internet abbreviations, there are alternatives to just the plain “orz” for those who have grown tired of it. Here’s just a small sampling; see if you can visualize them in the letters:

● STO (person bowing to the right) ● OLS (person lying on the ground with hands in air) ● prz (person bowing to the left with a pompadour)

▼ Why you’d need to ever apologize for anything with hair like that, however, remains a mystery.

#4. 鯖 (“saba”)

Wikipedia/Rex

Unlike the last items on the list, which an outsider would simply have no idea what they mean, this one has a normal meaning all by itself, which could result in some hilarious misunderstandings.

Saba (鯖) is the Japanese word for “mackerel.” At least, that’s what it means at the fish market, but when you see it online, there’s a chance that instead it’s referring to something else: a server, as in, an Internet server.

The reason why is very simple. The Japanese word for “server” is sābā (borrowed from English), and the word for “mackerel” is saba. The two are very similar, and the fish one is two less keyboard-presses to type, so it taking over as an abbreviation was almost inevitable.

This tweet, for example, would be kind of bizarre to an outsider if they thought “servers” were a type of fish.

▼ “I’ve been on and off the hasa and minez servers since 11:00 and never saw anyone.”

#3. DQN

PAKUTASO

If there’s one thing Japanese is rich with, it’s ways of calling someone “stupid.” As we’ve seen before in the most offensive swear words and insults, Japanese is an ice cream buffet of distinct flavors of the word “idiot.”

So now let’s add another to the list, an Internet favorite: DQN.

“DQN” isn’t an acronym for anything. Instead it’s an abbreviation of the word dokyun (D = do, Q = kyu, N = n), which means something like “idiot/stupid,” especially if they do something rash or reckless without thinking, such as running red lights while driving, being corrupt in business/government, or engaging in yankii (“hoodlum”) behavior.

The word has its origin in the late nineties/earlier 2000s Japanese TV show Mokugeki! Dokyun! (“Caught on Camera! Idiots!”). It got picked up by the Internet and has never left its grasp ever since, remaining as a refreshing way to call someone an idiot instead of the usual baka.

▼ “When I look at DQN drivers I often see weed-shaped air fresheners hanging from their rearview mirrors.”

#2. 草生える (“kusa haeru”)

GAHAG

If using “www” or warota as the Japanese version of LOL is too commonplace for you, then here’s another addition you can make to your linguistic arsenal: kusa haeru.

At first glance the word kusa haeru has a meaning that has nothing to do with laughing. Kusa means grass, and haeru means “to grow/sprout,” so it just means “growing grass.”

The word has its origin from “www,” which if you use a little bit of imagination, looks like blades of grass sprouting out of the ground. This is especially noticeable when watching videos on the Japanese website NicoNico Douga, where viewers’ comments fly across the video.

▼ Just look at all that grass growing on this video screenshot!

And NicoNico Douga is where the phrase kusa haeru got its origin. It’s now used all over the Internet and can sometimes be seen abbreviated just as kusa. Similar to the “server/mackerel” slang, it’s kind of funny to imagine someone reading it who doesn’t know the double meaning.

▼ “Even though the three of us finally got together, we just watched Hikakin videos on YouTube in silence growing grass.”

And the #1 most indecipherable Japanese Internet slang word is…

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1. △

PAKUTASO

Yup, that’s right. The final item on the list isn’t an abbreviation, heck it’s barely even a word. It’s just a symbol, a triangle: △

The word for “triangle-shape” in Japanese is sankakukei, and again if you use a little imagination, it can progress into a different phrase completely:

1. sankakukei (“triangle-shape”) turns into… 2. san ka kukei which turns into… 3. san ga kakkee (“___-san is cool/handsome”)

San is of course the suffix added to people’s names in Japanese, and kakkee is the masculine/tough way of saying the word kakkoii (“cool/handsome”).

So if you want to say that your favorite anime character (Luffy from One Piece, of course) is cool, there’s no need to spell out the whole phrase, you can just slam a triangle at the end of his name.

▼ Which is exactly what this excited fan did here. ルフィ (Luffy) + △ = Luffy-san ga kakkee!

▼ And just in case there was any doubt as to the meaning of the triangle, this tweet spells it out: “Luffy△ = Luffy-san is cool”

So there you have it, the top five indecipherable Japanese Internet slang words. Are there any crazy Internet slang words in your native language? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to figure them out as we enjoy a nice bowl of the top five Japanese spring foods.

References: Netto Yogo no Imi Jiten Top image: PAKUTASO (edited by SoraNews24)