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I recently learned the word ムキムキ and what instantly struck me was how it
appears to be some kind of a visual pun.

ム representing a flexed arm

キ representing a classic barbell

Together they appear to be a set of arms exercising which seems appropriate
considering the word means muscular/brawny. Is this just a coincidence?

I have found one [blog post](https://midorixde.exblog.jp/26707302/) which
seems to suggests it comes from the German word 'Muskel' but the phonetic
translation seems to be quite different.
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2020-05-06T18:52:28.667
77106
2020-05-07T13:40:51.580
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question
words etymology adjectives
Is the word ムキムキ a deliberate visual pun?
Although it is an interesting observation, it is unlikely to be anything more
than a coincidence. There is an established theoretical body of literature on
Japanese sound symbolism which takes into account things like phonoaesthetics.
It seems that some onomatopoeic forms use particular combinations of
consonants and vowels to convey a range of related concepts. It is most likely
to be derived from such linguistic phenomenon. According to Tranter in "The
Languages of Japan and Korea", most of these words are not derivable from
content words anyway. In English, you see a similar thing in words like
'glow', 'glisten', 'glitter', 'glimmer', etc, which all convey something to do
with light/reflection.

Also, although icons such as the ones you mentioned are ubiquitous these days,
they weren't prevalent before the huge explosion in the spread of mobile
devices in the last 15 years, whereas words like ムキムキ were.

Despite that, there is no reason to not use it as a visual pun :)
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2020-05-06T21:37:53.590
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answer
Expanding on kandyman's answer.

### Origins of _mukimuki_ : probably not German

According to the Shogakukan _Kokugo Dai Jiten_ (KDJ) entry
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%90%91%E5%90%91-2086184), the first cited
textual instance of a word _mukimuki_ is way back in the 700s in the
_Man'yōshū_ poetry anthology. This is much older than the German word _Muskel_
("muscle"), of which _Mucki_ is a derivation. Per the **Herkunft**
("Etymology") section in the Duden entry
[here](https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Muskel#herkunft), _Muskel_ traces
back to Latin _musculus_ ("little mouse"), presumably from the way a flexing
muscle looks a bit like a small animal moving around.

### Origins of _mukimuki_ : sense development

Again per [the KDJ
entry](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%90%91%E5%90%91-2086184), _mukimuki_ meant
something more like "each going in whichever facing ( _muki_ ) or direction",
and this extended to a sense of "different preferences and inclinations". We
see similar senses listed in the Daijisen and Daijirin entries
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%90%91%E3%81%8D%E5%90%91%E3%81%8D-641095).

So far, none of these list any sense related to "muscular". We don't find that
until we look
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%80%E3%81%8D%E3%82%80%E3%81%8D-641096)
in the Daijisen entry for the kana-only spellizang むきむき, or
[here](https://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%80%E3%81%8D%E3%82%80%E3%81%8D) in
the Japanese Wiktionary.

I can't find anything directly relevant to how the "muscular" sense arose. I
suspect two possibilities:

  * From the oldest sense of "each going in whichever direction", developing from the idea of "able to go whatever way", to "capable / strong" in general, and from there to "muscular".  
This seems less likely, given the sizable semantic (meaning-wise) gap between
"each in their own direction" to "muscular". The KDJ in particular is pretty
good about listing historical development where known, and [their entry for
向き向き](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%90%91%E5%90%91-2086184) is missing any such
details.

  * Instead, a vowel shift and slight semantic shift from similarly-structured adverb _mukumuku_ ("thickly, in a billowing or bulging manner"), first [cited in the KDJ](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%80%E3%81%8F%E3%82%80%E3%81%8F-641167#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8) to a text from 1254.  
_Mukumuku_ is limited to soft contexts, things like cotton batting or clouds
or smoke. However, here we do have nearly the same word, with a similar
"bulging" sense. There is at least one other example of a reduplicative adverb
pair with one ending in _-u_ and the other in _-i_ , specifically _kurukuru_ ↔
_kurikuri_ , of overlapping but not identical meanings. The pair _sukusuku_ ↔
_sukisuki_ also have close senses and may be related, demonstrating a similar
structure.

### Tentative conclusion about the derivation

While I cannot find anything definitively stating when the "muscular" sense
arose, I suspect it is significantly older than contact between Japanese
speakers and German speakers, and indeed possibly older than the German word
_Mucki_ itself. As others have noted, this Japanese word is also much older
than emoji.
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2020-05-07T00:39:05.860
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answer