Word
Kana: やっかい Romaji: yakkai Level: N3

厄介

Meaning in English

trouble, burden, nuisance

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Word context

What it means

厄介 means troublesome or burdensome; something or someone that causes problems or extra effort and is unwelcome to deal with.

Main meanings

  • nuisance or burden that complicates a plan
  • a person or thing that requires extra care or effort
  • a tricky or awkward problem that is hard to solve

How to use it

Used as a na-adjective to describe people, tasks, or situations that create trouble or require extra effort; more common in casual and semi-formal contexts, often paired with 厄介だ/厄介な before a noun; examples in Japanese: 厄介な問題 (yakkaina mondai), 厄介な手続き (yakkaina tetsuzuki).

Variants and close terms

  • 迷惑な (meiwaku na) – nuisance
  • 面倒な (mendou na) – bothersome, tedious
  • 手間がかかる (tema ga kakaru) – time-consuming
  • 楽な (raku na) – easy, not troublesome

Composition

  • 厄: misfortune, calamity
  • 介: interpose, intervene
  • Together: a burden or problem that interposes itself between you and a goal; something troublesome that demands extra effort

Etymology

From 厄 misfortune and 介 interpose, the compound formed in classical Japanese; the pronunciation merged into the modern yakkai as a single word.

Word class

na-adjective (形容動詞)

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