ki ga tōku naru lit. ‘one’s spirit gets far away’
Japanese idiom, everyday. To faint or pass out.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use 気が遠くなる
?
Everyday Japanese for the moment your senses slip away: at the sight of blood, in the heat, after a blow. It often stops just short of passing out, so “気が遠くなりそう” (I feel like I’m going to faint) is common. The second, very frequent use is figurative: 気が遠くなるような (so huge it makes you dizzy) describes a mind-boggling number, distance or amount of work.
Also said 気の遠くなる
気が遠くなる
in real sentences
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彼女は血を見て気が遠くなりました。
Kanojo wa chi o mite ki ga tōku narimashita.
She felt faint at the sight of blood.
Tatoeba, sentence by small_snow, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
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それは気が遠くなるような計画だ。
Sore wa ki ga tōku naru yō na keikaku da.
It is a stupendous project.
Tatoeba, sentence by bunbuku, translation by AlanF_US, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does 気が遠くなる
come from?
The picture is your mind (気) drifting away from your body until you can’t reach it. English Wiktionary glosses it literally as “one’s spirit is getting far away”. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (via Kotobank) quotes it from the kyōgen play Jishaku in the Torahiro text, which dates from the late Muromachi to early Edo period. Nobody has recorded anything more specific than that.
Mistakes learners make with 気が遠くなる
Reading 遠く as distance in space and thinking someone has gone far away. Here 気 is your mind or consciousness, and it’s that which drifts off.
Other Japanese idioms like 気が遠くなる
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