14098
So, I was watching an anime, whereupon I found the following text (cf.
[screencap](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aGGiQ.jpg)):

> 夜ト・春夏冬中  
>  ０９０－ｘｘｘｘ－＃＃３ｘ  
>  どんなお悩みも解決いたします！

This text appears in the context of the character 夜ト trying to find work. I'm
having difficulty figuring out what 春夏冬 means. If you just glue the _on_
readings for those three characters together, you get しゅんかとう, which only seems
to appear as the name of various establishments. I also found that this can
apparently be read in a punny way as あきない (since 春夏冬 is all the seasons but
秋).

I'm guessing that the correct reading of 春夏冬 in this context is あきない since
しゅんかとう doesn't fit. But what does that actually mean? I doubt it's 秋がない /
秋ではない / "not autumn", given that that doesn't make sense in context.

This term doesn't seem to appear in any of the standard online dictionary
searches (kotobank, goo.ne.jp, weblio, nor even in zokugo-dict), so I'm kind
of at a loss here.
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2014-01-07T09:03:50.353
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2015-01-22T15:54:51.107
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question
words
What does 春夏冬 mean?
_The following answer is based on information taken from an earlier answer
written by Tokyo Nagoya, which has been deleted by the author._

As you point out, 春夏秋冬{じゅんかしゅうとう} is a reference to the four seasons, and in
the case of 春夏冬中, 秋 has cleverly been left off (and a 中 added). Your intuition
about the あきない part meaning that there is no autumn is correct. When you add
the 中{ちゅう} at the end you get あきないちゅう, which is a homophone of 商い中. This is
synonymous with 営業中{えいぎょうちゅう}, or "in business"/"open." It's a kanji pun
saying that his business is open.

So we go 秋がない→秋ない→あきない→商{あきな}い＋中
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answer
The content below is an exact copy of [a deleted
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/14094/3437) by [user
l'electeur](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/users/4032/l%c3%a9lecteur).

* * *

This is based on the premise that it is a pun. DO NOT read seriously because
if it is not a pun, this will be the wrong "answer".

Normally, we say (and we often do) 「[春夏秋冬]{しゅんかしゅうとう}」 to refer to the four
seasons, but we have a 春夏冬中 here ---with no [秋]{あき} and an additional 「中」.

秋がない---＞秋ない---＞あきない---＞[商]{あきな}い

商い means "business", "trade", etc. And we still have a 中 to think about.

商い中（あきないちゅう） means "We are open." as you can see below. 「[営業中]{えいぎょうちゅう}」 is
its synonym.

[http://image.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%95%86%E3%81%84%E4%B8%AD&aq=-1&oq=&ei=UTF-8](http://image.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%95%86%E3%81%84%E4%B8%AD&aq=-1&oq=&ei=UTF-8)

So, 夜ト is saying that he is open for business.
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