--- description: Dictionary.com added a definition for the word "Pokémon" on July 19, not long after "Pokémon Go" took the world by storm title: The Surprising History Behind the Word 'Pokémon' image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9621892e08191fa4/69889c08bc6cfcdc9d3ddcec/pokemon-go4.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [language](/tag/language/) ## language Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Surprising History Behind the Word _Pokémon_ by [Katy Steinmetz](/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 19, 2016 12:00 PM CUT  Pokemon GO game on a smartphone, in Berlin, on July 14, 2016. Pokemon GO game on a smartphone, in Berlin, on July 14, 2016.Thomas Trutschel—Getty Images by [Katy Steinmetz](/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 19, 2016 12:00 PM CUT If a bewildered Boomer turned to an online dictionary these last few weeks, hoping to make some sense out of all this _Pokémon_ business in the news, they likely would have been greeted with a correction. Did you mean _pikeman_, a soldier armed with a pike? Or perhaps the shell membrane, _putamen_? Maybe _pygmaean_, that which is typical of pygmies? As of Tuesday, however, this set will get the results they’re looking for on Dictionary.com. --- > “” --- The word is among more than 300 in the dictionary’s editors latest batch, and they say that the timing is a coincidence. This trademark just happened to be in their definition queue right as a viral mobile game by that name [took the world by poké-storm](http://time.com/4400791/pokemon-go-iphone-android-nintendo/ "undefined"). But it’s dovetailing with a “surge in lookups” that they’re seeing now and is timely evidence that this Japanese-spawned term has become an English word in its own right _—_ even though it was kind of English to begin with. The name of Nintendo’s lucrative franchise was created through a process known as _wasei eigo_. That phrase, says language writer John Kelly, literally means “Japan-made English” and refers to the process of Japanese speakers taking “English nuts and bolts” and “assembling them into new Japanese words.” In rare cases, if the term proves popular or useful enough, it then gets borrowed back by English speakers, coming full circle, poké-style. In a common version of this process, Japanese speakers start with English words — in this case the raw materials were _pocket_ and _monster_ — and then “transmogrify” them so they sound like a more typical Japanese phrase and describe a novel concept, Kelly says. The words get spelled out in a Japanese writing system used for foreign words, called katakana, so academics call this step “katakanization.” Launching his game in the mid-90s, developer Satoshi Tajiri took the first syllables of each of those katakanized words— _poketto monsutā —_ and mashed them together. Hence the three-syllable word in the title of the [most popular mobile game in U.S. history](http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/15/pokemon-go-mobile-game-now-biggest-us-history "undefined"). English becomes Japanese becomes portmanteau becomes English. Kelly, who specializes in writing about etymology, points to other examples of words that went through the _wasei-eigo_ machine and ended up back in English dictionaries. There’s _salary man_, a term for a white-collar businessman that was invented by the Japanese; they pronounced it _sarar_ _ī-man_ before English speakers re-Anglicized it. Another example is _cosplay_ — the practice of dressing up as a character from a film, book or video game. Japanese speakers turned the words _costume_ and _play_ into _kosupure_, which became _cosplay_ when English speakers welcomed their root words back in a new form. Perhaps the best known example is _karaoke_. Its root, explains Nagoya University‘s Nathan Hopson, are the Japanese word for empty (_kara_) and the katakanized word for “orchestra” (_ōkesutora_). As he has written, the popularity of that word in English and around the world is a testament to “the ways in which language becomes globalized in thickly tangled webs of exchange.” Other examples that never got taken up in America are _romansu gurē_ (_romance_ \+ _gray_), a Japanese word for a middle-aged lover. There is _wan patān_ (_one_ \+ _pattern_), an adjective that [describes](https://books.google.com/books%3Fid=28wDbfPg7QsC%26printsec=frontcover%23v=onepage%26q%26f=false "undefined") “that which is overdone.” Though academics have outlined competing theories about what exactly is going on when Japanese speakers coin new words based on foreign ones, Kelly emphasizes that it is not a “poor attempt” at English. “It’s not trying to do a one-to-one translation,” he says. “It’s making something wholly new.” Showing up in a dictionary isn’t an absolute testament to whether a foreign-derived word is part of standard English, though it’s evidence you would use to make a case if you were, say, playing high-level Scrabble. Beyond that, there is other evidence that _Pokémon_ has taken on a life of its own on this side of the Pacific. People are breaking it apart and forming new words, like pokémania, to describe the widespread, wild adoption of _Pokémon Go_. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “verbed” the title of the game, punnily saying she wished she could figure out how to get voters to “_Pokémon Go_ to the polls!” And while in Japanese, pokémon would be the singular and plural form, English speakers are describing the pet monsters as “pokémons,” much like how they say and write “[emojis](http://time.com/3000978/the-emojis-strange-power/ "undefined"),” which comes from the Japanese words for _picture_ (e-) and _character_ (moji). For his part, Kelly believes that a foreign word becomes an English one when lots of people are “using it very naturally and smoothly across a variety of contexts.” That uptake often happens quicker when the word fills a specific role, giving people a term that describes something no other string of letters can. And whether you are obsessed with them or desperately tired of hearing about them, those pet monsters go by no other name. “It’s like _karaoke_ on steroids!” Hopson says of _Pokémon_. “Two English words, katakana-ized, chopped in half, glued together, and then shipped back out to take over the world.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4411912/pokemon-go-word-origin/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4411912/pokemon-go-word-origin/"},"headline":"The Surprising History Behind the Word Pokémon","datePublished":"2016-07-19T12:00:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:57:43.539Z","description":"Dictionary.com added a definition for the word on July 19","url":"https://time.com/4411912/pokemon-go-word-origin/","keywords":["language","Living","Games"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9621892e08191fa4/69889c08bc6cfcdc9d3ddcec/pokemon-go4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katy Steinmetz","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9621892e08191fa4/69889c08bc6cfcdc9d3ddcec/pokemon-go4.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Pokemon Go","caption":"Pokemon Go","creditText":"Thomas Trutschel—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/language/","name":"language"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4411912/pokemon-go-word-origin/","name":"The Surprising History Behind the Word Pokémon"}}]}] ```