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First question ever here. :D

So, I hear a lot in media, when someone is fired from a job, normally they
refer to 首 as being fired, or firing someone, and might sometimes make the
gesture of getting their head cut off with their hands.

What is the etymology behind that? I am not super familiar with history, but
was it that if you were discharged from your position it'd be done by a
beheading? Or what is the background for why 首 as "head" or "neck" came to
also mean "dismissal from a job or post"?
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etymology colloquial-language history
首 when fired from a job: etymology?
Surely you've heard the stories of Samurai testing their swords? Do you think
they are urban legends?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tameshigiri>

Read the Japanese page on that after you read the English.

Don't read it before or after lunch, I suppose.

(afterthought)

Since Chocolate asks, I'll unpack that a bit.

(I assume you aren't asking if beheading has been used in the corporate
environment in Japan, other than by, for instance, organized crime, and if you
want some cultural reference on use by organized crime, consider the movie
"Black Rain", not the one about Hiroshima after the bomb, but [the thriller
starring Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, et.
al.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rain_\(1989_American_film\)))

I was looking around for proof of this, haven't found any yet, but my wife
tells me of the tradition that many castles were built by slaves who were
afterward buried, sometimes alive, sometimes being killed first, she has said,
around the castle.

She also tells me of Samurai who made somewhat more use than seems reasonable
of the privilege of testing their swords on the persons of commoners, usually
commoners who displeased them. I have read that such privilege was not without
consequence, but it apparently did happen. I don't have that reference to
hand, either.

There is a small shrine near where I live that commemorates the commoners
whose lives were sacrificed in the building of a castle which was built near
the shrine. Now there are just a few bits of a corner wall on a small
partially-protected plot of land (about thirty by forty meters) and bits of
walls and pottery and such that are unearthed during construction in an area
roughly a square kilometer around the shrine.

I have some better evidence of this, but many allied prisoners were beheaded
by the Japanese. See this wikipedia article:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes>

If I get a chance to read the marker on that shrine today, I'll see if it says
anything specific enough to be used as a reference.

(end afterthought)

(2nd afterthought)

Random related words from dictionary.goo.jp:

[首賭](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/62678/meaning/m0u/)（け） putting one's neck
on the line

Wait. I don't have time to just run through all the くび I find in the
dictionary, so I'll suggest that you search via google for this phrase:

「くび goo」

and you'll get a lot of dictionary stuff about くび。

(Google and Goo.ne.jp are not, as far as I know, related entities.)

Kotobank and other such sites are also useful.

(end 2nd afterthought)
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It bears noting that this kind of expression is not limited to Japanese. Have
you never heard the phrase _"heads will roll"_ in English, in reference to
people likely to lose their jobs due to some scandal or other? It is not a far
stretch to make the analogy of losing one's head for losing one's livelihood.

### Additional detail

Shogakukan's 国語大辞典 and the Daijirin dictionary both give similar sense
details. From Shogakukan:

> **5** （首を切られるの意から）
> ①関係が断たれること。縁が切れること。＊洒・青楼真廓誌‐二「とてもこんどはおさまらねへ此ものまへは首だろう」②職を失うこと。失職。「くびになる」

Daijirin's is visible [here](http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%8F%E3%81%B3)
as sense 6, giving essentially the same information.

Both dictionary entries essentially trace the meaning from "to lose one's
head" to "to lose one's livelihood".
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