Taka wo Kukuru
Today I will talk about the Japanese idiom “taka wo kukuru.”
たかをくくる
“Taka wo kukuru” means to predict an amount of something easily, and to downplay it.
今日は「たかをくくる」という日本の慣用句を紹介します。
“Taka” means an amount of harvesting or income, and “kukuru” means to bundle something or to calculate something in advance.
「たかをくくる」は、物事の程度を安易に予測し、大したことはないと見くびることを意味します。
Therefore, the literal meaning of this idiom is just to predict an amount of something.
「たか」は収穫や収入の数量を、「くくる」は何かをまとめることやあらかじめ計算して見当をつけることを意味します。
The reason why it contains the meaning of downplaying is considered to be derived from the fact that we estimated military forces based on “kokudaka” (which means a kind of unit to express productivities of lands) during Edo period in Japan.
このため、この言葉の文字通りの意味は単に「物事の程度を予想する」ということになります。
