Normally meaning clean, seiso can also mean pure when applied to people in
certain contexts. I've googled seiso and found some people claiming that the
term originated with Vtubers, but obviously that's not true. Other sources
claim seiso (meaning pure, as in a Seiso na onna no ko) is a long standing
Japanese word.

So my question is, would an average Japanese person use seiso to refer to
purity, and is this a rare occurence? And is it a long standing meaning?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-10-26T03:52:58.747
90901
2021-11-30T22:08:20.887
48539
question
meaning history
How often do normal Japanese people use "Seiso" to refer to purity?
I doubt "pure" is the best word to describe 清楚, but it does mean something
along the lines of "simple", "innocent", "clean", "plain", "tidy", and so on.
Please refer to that YouTube video or Google Image Search for the connotation
of the word. As a matter of fact, 清楚 is a common word that virtually every
teenager understands, and it has been around [at least for 100
years](https://myokoym.net/aozorasearch/search?word=%E6%B8%85%E6%A5%9A)
without any significant change in the meaning. I'm curious what page said this
term is VTuber-derived. Recently, this word may be especially common as a
category of the faces and personalities of young female people (including
idols and VTubers), but it is not used in a different way from its original
meaning.

**EDIT:** As pointed out in the comment section, the word 清楚 seems to be often
used sarcastically in the VTuber community, and the word seems to have been
imported to fans in the West along with the incorrect definition. See [this
article](https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E6%B8%85%E6%A5%9A%28Vtuber%29). This is a
kind of local joke that only works in the VTuber community.

> 「清楚」の本来の意味は「飾りけがなく、清らかなこと」。今日では、慎ましく清潔感のある美しい女性を表す言葉として使われている。  
>
> Vtuber界隈においては、公式設定や自身の主張で「清楚」を標榜していてもおよそ清楚とは言いがたい言動がしばしば見られ、そうしたVtuberの形骸化した「清楚」設定は本来的な用法とは正反対とも言える新しい語義として受け入れられている。
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-10-27T00:54:42.810
90913
2021-10-31T22:06:59.457
2021-10-31T22:06:59.457
5010
5010
90901
answer