The other day after washing my hair I decided to add the Japanese word for "dandruff" to my vocabulary. It turns out to be an interesting word.
It has only one pronunciatation, ふけ (fuke), but two kanji spellings and I got the impression from WWWJDIC this word isn't usually written in hiragana (correct me if I'm wrong).
- 雲脂 literally "cloud fat".
- 頭垢 literally "head grime".
But ふ and け are not among the usual readings for 雲, 脂, 頭, and 垢.
So are both spellings ateji? Or what is actually happening? By the way I can't seem to type them using my Windows IME.
I also note that these Japanese terms don't seem to share anything in common with the terms for "dandruff" in the other languages Japanese often has many factors in common with:
- Mandarin 頭皮屑, 头皮屑 (tóupíxiè)
- Korean 비듬 (bideum)
- Okinawan いりち (ʔirici)
This makes me think it was a Japanese word already before Japan borrowed kanji from China and the characters were applied for meaning, which would make it a case of ateji. But this is just a hypothesis for now that I can't prove.