In the course of my study I've come across several words which all seemed to
have a high degree of overlap, in that they all essentially meant 'to tease,
to bully, to torment'. If possible I'd like to know if the following words
really are as similar as dictionaries would make them seem:

  * [苛]{いじ}める
  * [虐]{いじ}める
  * [苛]{さいな}む
  * [甚振]{いた・ぶ}る
  * [焦]{じ}らす
  * [揶揄]{から・か}う
  * [詰]{なじ}る
  * [嬲]{なぶ}る

Many thanks.
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2018-09-15T11:54:26.907
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2019-08-22T08:01:40.157
2018-10-25T15:45:29.473
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question
nuances
Differentiating between the many words for bullying, teasing and tormenting
This is a long intro to explain a concept. Bear with me.

If you think of the lexical inventory of a language as a patchwork quilt, with
each lexeme/patch covering a specific aspect of the lived reality/experience
of the language’s native speakers, languages which are related have similar
arrangements of patches. Unrelated languages have dissimilar arrangements.

The arrangements of English and Japanese are very different. Take “run” and
走る. 男の子が走っている overlaps closely with “the boy is running,” but 車が走っている doesn’t
mean “the car is running.” It means “the car is in motion.” To say “the car is
running” you’d have to say something like エンジンがかかっている, ie something totally
different.

If you look at the dictionary entry for 走る, the dictionary compilers try to
communicate all the different meanings, but ultimately you have to look at it
from the perspective of inside the language, and not via J>E dictionary
entries. All of those words, when translated into English, do come out
sounding very similar, but in Japanese, the way they are used is very
different.
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2018-09-25T13:48:40.540
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First of all, I rarely see most of them at least in newspapers. It might be
used in some literature. Also, I am pretty sure we don't write these in Kanji
usually. But here are my personal thoughts.

いじめる implies physical abuse. I sometimes see 虐める in the sense of 虐待{ぎゃくたい}
such as child abuse, sexual abuse etc. I see 苛める pretty rare.

I usually see さいなむ in a passive tense, [苛]{さいな}まれる. It means a person is
psychologically stressed by something. I rarely see using it for a physical
stress.

いたぶる is close to いじめる, implies physical abuse, but I don't see it often.

じらす is different. It means keeping someone in suspense.

For me, からかう、なじる、なぶる all implies verbal abuse. からかう is a common word, but we
rarely use the latter two.
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2018-10-26T06:14:23.823
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answer