Taka wo Kukuru

Today I will talk about the Japanese idiom "taka wo kukuru."

"Taka wo kukuru" means to predict an amount of something easily, and to downplay it.

"Taka" means an amount of harvesting or income, and "kukuru" means to bundle something or to calculate something in advance.

Therefore, the literal meaning of this idiom is just to predict an amount of something.

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.

たかをくくる

今日は「たかをくくる」という日本の慣用句を紹介します。

「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。

「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。

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。

「相手を見くびる」という意味を持つようになったのは、かつて日本での戦において、兵力を石高で見積もっていたことに由来すると言われています。

• Today I will talk about the Japanese idiom "taka wo kukuru."
• Today I will talk about the Japanese idiom "taka wo kukuru."

• "Taka wo kukuru" means to predict an amount of something easily, and to downplay it.
• "Taka wo kukuru" means to easily predict an amount of something, and to downplay that amount.

  The object of the verb "downplay" should be repeated, because what "it" is is not clear.

• "Taka" means an amount of harvesting or income, and "kukuru" means to bundle something or to calculate something in advance.
• "Taka" means an amount; as in a harvest or monetary income, and "kukuru" means to bundle something or to calculate something in advance.

  If you use a "-ing" type word it sounds more natural to use another "ing" type word for income, like "earning". Otherwise, I substituted it for a non-ing word (harvest) for "parallelism". "Income" without monetary is ambiguous.

• Therefore, the literal meaning of this idiom is just to predict an amount of something.
• Therefore, the literal meaning of this idiom is just to predict an amount.

  "of something" is redundant, repeated many times before

• 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.
• The reason why it contains the nuance of "to downplay" comes from how military forces used to be estimated based on "kokudaka" (which uses a unit of measure originally intended to measure land productivity) during Japan's Edo period.

  To just say "meaning" is a bit odd since you told the literal meaning before, "nuance" means something like "deeper meaning". You can say "we" but to sound more professional or academic, avoid all use of first person pronouns.