茂

to grow thickly; be overgrown; bush; clump

Kanji 1850

Learn to talk about overgrown gardens, elephants hiding in thickets, and Bruce Willis's sparse hair! Enjoy profiles of celebrities with 茂 in their names, from visionary architect Shigeru Ban to baseball great Hideo Nomo to Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Donkey Kong. Read a fun folktale about a tanuki and a tea kettle. Also find out about a place name that pops up all over Kyoto.

Revision History:

Apr. 28, 2023: p. 8: The word 繁茂 is exclusively about weeds, so I adjusted the definition of that term accordingly and deleted the sample sentence about sunflowers.

May 25, 2021: Updated the Henshall etymology.

May 22, 2021: Fixed broken links on pp. 1 and 15.

Dec. 13, 2019: 

• p. 7: Deleted the keyword 心の茂み (the thickets of one's mind) and the associated sample sentence because the term makes no sense to my proofreader.
• p. 13: Fixed a broken link.
• p. 15: Added a link to the Kanshudo games. 

May 4, 2019: pp. 10-12: In the folktale, I made these changes:        

• • Defined 古道具屋 as "secondhand store," not "secondhand furniture store."
• • Added かかる (to be caught in) as vocab. under the 2nd sentence.
• • Deleted "oneself" from the def. of 化ける (ばける: to transform oneself into).
• • Changed くるりと (around) to くるり (turning).
• • Added "and come back" to the end of this: The priest who bought the new tea kettle told his young priest, “Go wash this tea kettle.”
• • Corrected okurigana to this: 慌てる (あわてる: to be flustered). Also added "in a fluster" to the sentence.
• • Added "for me" to “Anyway, boil some water for me now.”
• • Changed the def. of さあさあ to "come on, come on." Also changed the translation of that sentence to "a very rare chance" instead of "a rare chance."

Mar. 29, 2019: Made the following changes:

• p. 2: Added the new Henshall etymology to the Etymology Box. Also updated the Sears link there.
• pp. 7, 13, 15: Fixed broken links.
• p. 11: Fixed the okurigana of 優しい in sentence vocab.
• p. 15: Added a link back to this page so you can more easily access the game below.

Oct. 11, 2013: Originally published