Talk:絶対

"絕對" (the current senses) doesn't exist in Middle Chinese. In Middle Chinese it only means (or appears to mean) "to lose one's spouse". Wyang (talk) 02:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Fascinating. So do you happen to know, was this a Meiji-era coinage back-borrowed into Chinese, such as 社会? Or had the absolute meaning evolved in Chinese prior to importation into Japanese, suggesting a borrowing later than Middle Chinese? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • All the relevant quotes I get seem to come from the last 200 years. If this is a recent coinage, it's still hard to ascertain where it was used or who used it first, like many others (the modern neologisms are just too voluminous). It's perhaps best to avoid specifying this and just say "Sino-Japanese, from ...", I think. Wyang (talk) 03:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• I'll keep digging then, it's starting to sound like maybe a Japanese coinage from the great efforts to translate Western texts and catch up technologically. I'll rework the etym for now until anyone can nail down something definite. Thanks for your help! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

  @Wyang and @Eirikr, I found the evidence that Inoue Tetsujirō coined this term in 1881 in his work. In 哲学字彙^{URL here}, we can see the sentence “Absolute　絕對［按、絕對孤立自得之義、對又作待、義同、絕待之字、出于法華玄義］、純全、專制（政）,” and the character 按 indicates that the term was coined by him. I will rewrite the etymology section after a week if there is no counterargument in particular. Lugriaルグリア [会話／貢献] 13:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  @Lugria, thank you! I like the connection given there to older Buddhist term 絕待 (zetsudai), for which we also need an entry (c.f. entry at Kotobank). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:10, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

   Done Lugriaルグリア [会話／貢献] 13:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)