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The Japanese even have a word for it: Karoshi. > which can be translated literally as "overwork death", […] The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths ar

The Japanese even have a word for it: Karoshi. > which can be translated literally as "overwork death", […] The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks or strokes due to stress and a starvation diet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

535188B17C93743 5y ago
The Japanese and the Germans are something else with their brilliant words for random things.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  I've always thought that the existence or lack of concise words that describe such things (or don't) says a lot about a culture. The word exists in Japanese because it's such a common problem in their work culture, and it's so frequently talked about they needed a word for it instead of a string of words everytime they wanted to convey the meaning of working someone quite literally to death (stress levels so high they impact your health to the point of even causing death). It doesn't take a shovel to do these, you can abuse and stress your body in many ways to cause death, we just think of literal more clear physical damage from the past because it's easy to understand "back breaking" labor. We dont have "heart breaking" labor (physically and emotionally speaking), even though we really do: conditions that can lead to heart attacks and all sorts of other problems. In the US, it seems like we're getting to a point we need such words because people are starting to talk about ridiculous conditions more--it's becoming less a stigma of being 'lazy' and more awareness of labor abuse is on the rise. I'm convinced "burnt out" is a more modern trend and is often misused from the original meaning of the phrase because of a lack of appropriate terms to describe the overwork trends we're seeing more and more in the US. Such terms may also be lagging due to a lack of acknowledgement of these problems by some from factors like stigma or self-doubt.
- tk75x 5y ago
  Seems like a common function in languages that utilize compound words for many things.
namelosw 5y ago
Chinese too: 過勞死 / 过劳死. It's the exact same Kanji combination for Karoshi.
cableshaft 5y ago
There's even games about the concept: https://www.karoshigame.com/ https://www.karoshigame.com/

535188B17C93743 5y ago

The Japanese and the Germans are something else with their brilliant words for random things.

Frost1x 5y ago
I've always thought that the existence or lack of concise words that describe such things (or don't) says a lot about a culture. The word exists in Japanese because it's such a common problem in their work culture, and it's so frequently talked about they needed a word for it instead of a string of words everytime they wanted to convey the meaning of working someone quite literally to death (stress levels so high they impact your health to the point of even causing death). It doesn't take a shovel to do these, you can abuse and stress your body in many ways to cause death, we just think of literal more clear physical damage from the past because it's easy to understand "back breaking" labor. We dont have "heart breaking" labor (physically and emotionally speaking), even though we really do: conditions that can lead to heart attacks and all sorts of other problems. In the US, it seems like we're getting to a point we need such words because people are starting to talk about ridiculous conditions more--it's becoming less a stigma of being 'lazy' and more awareness of labor abuse is on the rise. I'm convinced "burnt out" is a more modern trend and is often misused from the original meaning of the phrase because of a lack of appropriate terms to describe the overwork trends we're seeing more and more in the US. Such terms may also be lagging due to a lack of acknowledgement of these problems by some from factors like stigma or self-doubt.
tk75x 5y ago
Seems like a common function in languages that utilize compound words for many things.

namelosw 5y ago

Chinese too: 過勞死 / 过劳死. It's the exact same Kanji combination for Karoshi.

cableshaft 5y ago

There's even games about the concept: https://www.karoshigame.com/ https://www.karoshigame.com/