Hiku: Pull, Subtract, Look Up, and Catch a Cold

One movement behind many meanings

Start with the door. Japanese doors are labelled 押 for push and 引 for pull, and that is the literal core of 引く: something comes toward you. Every other sense is that movement extended somewhere new. You draw a line across paper, so a line gets pulled. You draw a number out of a total, so subtraction is pulling. You draw a lot out of a box, so kuji o hiku. You draw somebody's eyes toward you, so me o hiku.

Two senses need a little more imagination but still fit. Looking a word up is drawing it out of a dictionary, which is exactly what a paper dictionary felt like. And catching a cold is drawing it in from the air around you, which is why the expression uses o rather than ni. Once you see the movement, you are no longer memorising eight unrelated meanings but eight uses of one.

The practical consequence is that you should never learn hiku alone. Learn the noun and the verb together, because in Japanese the noun is what selects the sense. Kaze o hiku, jisho o hiku and kuji o hiku are single units in the mind of a speaker, and that is how they should sit in yours.

The senses of hiku at a glance

One entry is missing on purpose. Hiku also covers being run over by a vehicle, normally written 轢く but usually given in kana in news reports as hikareru. It is worth recognising and not worth practising, and the context that carries it is unmistakable.

Pulling in the physical world

The literal sense is the one you will see printed most often, since every glass door in Japan carries osu or hiku. In speech, hiku is the neutral verb for pulling and hipparu is the effortful one. You pull a chair out for somebody with hiku, and you haul a stuck suitcase with hipparu. The te-form is hiite, since 引く is a regular godan verb ending in ku, and the exception iku with its te-form itte does not affect it.

Curtains and blinds also take hiku, which surprises learners who expect a verb like close. And te o hiku in its literal sense means to lead somebody by the hand, most often a child in a crowd, which is a useful and gentle sentence to have ready at a station.

Kaze o hiku: the cold you pull

Kaze o hiku is the single most useful hiku collocation for a learner, because you will need it at work, at school and in a clinic. The verb is fixed and cannot be swapped for aru, motsu or naru. The past form kaze o hikimashita reports that you caught a cold, and the te-iru form kaze o hiite imasu describes the state of having one now, which is the form you usually want when explaining why you sound like that.

Two neighbours are worth keeping separate. Kaze-gimi desu is the mild version, meaning you feel a cold coming on, and it is a very natural thing to say before you commit to being ill. Influenza and other named illnesses take kakaru instead: infuruenza ni kakarimashita. Netsu, a fever, takes aru or deru, so netsu ga arimasu and netsu ga demashita, never netsu o hikimasu.

Jisho o hiku and other lookups

Jisho o hiku is the standard way to say look a word up, and it has survived the move from paper to phone screens without any difficulty. You can say jisho de hikimashita, using de for the tool, or jisho o hikimashita, treating the dictionary as the thing you draw from. Both are heard, and the second is the older and more idiomatic pattern.

The same verb reaches into more formal territory. Rei o hiku means to cite an example, and sakuin o hiku means to use an index. If you simply want to say look it up on your phone, sumaho de shirabemasu is the neutral modern choice, and the two verbs happily coexist in the same conversation.

Numbers, lines, and discounts

Subtraction is straightforward: A kara B o hiku, take B from A. The noun hikizan is the arithmetic operation, and biki, the voiced form of the masu-stem, appears everywhere in shops. Sen-en biki is a thousand yen off, ni-wari-biki is twenty percent off, and waribiki is the general word for a discount. Recognising biki on a price tag is a small piece of vocabulary with a large daily return.

Sen o hiku, to draw a line, works for a pen on paper and for the metaphor. Issen o hiku means to draw a firm boundary between yourself and something else, and shita ni sen o hiku, underlining, is what a teacher asks you to do with the important part of a sentence.

Attention, lots, and pulling back

Me o hiku and hitome o hiku describe something that catches the eye, usually a sign, a design or a colour. Ki o hiku is about catching somebody's interest, and it is neutral in most contexts, though ki o hikitai can sound like fishing for attention if the person is a colleague rather than a customer. Kanshin o hiku is the more formal version you will see in written Japanese.

Te o hiku has a second, figurative life: to withdraw from a project or a relationship with a business. Mi o hiku is a heavier version about stepping back from a position. And kuji o hiku is the verb for drawing lots, including omikuji at a shrine, which is a piece of vocabulary you will want on any first trip.

One casual usage is worth knowing so it does not confuse you. Among younger speakers hiku on its own can mean to be put off by something, as in sore wa chotto hiku. Don-biki is the noun. It is informal, slightly rude about the other person, and safest to recognise rather than to use.

Playing an instrument with hiku

弾く is the same sound with a different kanji, and it covers instruments you play with your fingers on strings or keys: piano, guitar, violin, koto, harp. Japanese does not use one verb for all instruments, which is a common source of mistakes. Drums are struck, so taiko o tatakimasu. Wind instruments are blown, so fue o fukimasu and torampetto o fukimasu. When you need a neutral verb for any instrument, ensō shimasu covers them all.

The potential form is hikemasu, so piano o hikemasu ka is how somebody asks whether you play. A modest answer is sukoshi dake desu, and a fuller one is kodomo no koro naratte imashita, I learnt as a child. Hikigatari, singing while accompanying yourself, is a useful noun if you play guitar.

When hiku means going down

Hiku is also intransitive, and in that use it describes something receding. A fever goes down, a swelling subsides, pain eases, the tide goes out, and the colour drains from a shocked face. These take ga rather than o, which is your signal that nobody is doing the pulling. Netsu ga hikimashita and netsu o hikimashita are not variants of one sentence; the second is simply wrong.

This is a good group to practise at a clinic or pharmacy, because it is exactly how you describe recovery. Sukoshi hiite kimashita, it has come down a little, is a natural answer to a doctor asking how you are today.

Compound verbs built on hiku

Hiku forms compounds generously, and most of them stay close to the pulling image. Hikidasu is to draw out, used for money at a cash machine and for information from a reluctant speaker, and the noun hikidashi is a drawer. Hikiukeru, to take on a job or a responsibility, is to pull it toward yourself. Hikizuru is to drag. Hikkosu, to move house, began as hikikosu and still conjugates as a godan verb: hikkoshimasu, hikkoshite.

A few nouns are worth adding at the same time, because they appear constantly and are easy once you hear the verb inside them. Hikiwake is a draw in a match, hikizan is subtraction, waribiki is a discount, and hikidashi doubles as a metaphor for the range of ideas somebody has to draw on.

Conjugation and how to keep the senses apart

Grammatically hiku is easy, which is a relief given how much work it does. It is a regular godan verb ending in ku, so the te-form follows the same rule as kaku and aruku: hiite. Every sense uses the same forms, whether you are pulling a door or catching a cold, and 弾く conjugates identically.

• Store every sense as a two-word unit: kaze o hiku, jisho o hiku, kuji o hiku, sen o hiku, me o hiku. Never revise the verb on its own.
• Check the particle before you speak. O means you are doing the pulling, ga means something is subsiding by itself.
• Keep kaze o hiku for colds only, and use kakaru for named illnesses and aru or deru for a fever.
• Sort instruments into three verbs once and for all: hiku for strings and keys, tataku for percussion, fuku for anything you blow.
• Read door signs aloud for a week, hiku and osu, until the literal meaning is so automatic that the figurative ones have something to hang on.
• Add one new hiku collocation a week rather than learning fifteen at once, and use it in a real sentence about your own day the same day you meet it.