Japanese with Manga

A half-eaten meal with 食べかけ

Vocabulary Explanation: Words ending in 掛ける

Kogoro, seen in profile at the right edge, looks down at a low table holding a bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, a soy sauce bottle, a fish on a plate, chopsticks, and an open newspaper.
名探偵コナン » Volume 28 » Page 52

A woman has hired Kogoro to find Shibata Shiro, a man she knew thirty years ago, and they track him to his apartment. Nobody answers the bell, but Shibata’s friend Yoshikawa arrives for a mahjong game and insists Shibata must be asleep. They find the door unlocked and the TV on, so they go in.

小五郎(こごろう):
「おいおい…」
“Hey, hey...”
小五郎(こごろう):
「メシも食(た)べかけじゃね――か！？」
“He even left his meal half-eaten!?”

Key Points

1食(た)べかけ, half-eaten
  • 食(た)べる means to eat. Its stem plus かけ makes a noun for something left partway through, so 食(た)べかけ means food someone started eating and didn’t finish.
  • It can stand alone with だ, as here, or modify a noun with の: 食(た)べかけのパン, a half-eaten piece of bread.
2も, “even this”
  • メシも means “the meal too”. The door was unlocked and the TV was on, and now the meal has been left half-eaten as well.
3Rough speech with メシ and じゃねーか
  • メシ is a rough, casual word for a meal, common in male speech.
  • じゃねーか is a rough form of じゃないか. It exclaims at something the speaker has just noticed. The long ― shows Kogoro stretching it out in disbelief.

Vocabulary

(Meal)

メシ is a rough, casual word for a meal or cooked rice. It is also written 飯(めし).

(Half-eaten)

食(た)べかけ describes food someone started eating and didn’t finish. It can modify a noun with の, as in 食(た)べかけのパン.

See Also

名探偵コナン © its respective creators. It is used here for educational commentary.