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In my text I read the sentence:

> あなたが体験したよりもっと[巨]{おお}きく、もっと深くさせてくれる力があるからだ。

(furigana is from the text)

I understand 大きく, and I understand some words with 巨 like 巨大. However, when I
looked up 巨きく in a dictionary, I was unable to find anything.

Why do these kind of readings exist; however, they are not in a dictionary?
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2012-05-18T19:21:21.387
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kanji furigana creative-furigana
Why do some kanji have furigana that are not valid readings?
Basic furigana means, for 絶対{ぜったい}, 'zettai' is how you read 絶対...period.

For the non-standard cases, think of it basically the same way, but with a
little twist: for 巨{おお}きく, 'oo' is how _I want_ you to read 巨.

As a deeper example...

> 泥棒{おまえ}は信用{しんよう}出来{でき}ない。

If this is a line of dialogue, the person is saying "I can't trust you", but
the implication is that "you" are a thief, and that is why you cannot be
trusted.

When the furigana are not standard, in my experience, the furigana is what is
said, and the kanji is what is meant. For your example, there's not a lot of
difference between 巨 and おお(きい), but it should be basically the same thing: おお
is how it's said, but 巨 is the underlying meaning.
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2012-05-18T20:43:22.693
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I would say, your question is "not well posed". When you study Japanese, you
are taught that each kanji has readings. It's taught that way, because, I
presume, it's easier to teach that way.

A more precise interpretation of what's happening in Japanese is that you
_choose_ a kanji for the Japanese word. In practice, there are _a few very
common_ choices for each Japanese word; so much so that it _appears_ as if
each kanji had fixed readings associated with it.

That's why you thought that the association of 巨 with おおきい was invalid. It's
not invalid. It's just that the writer _chose_ the kanji for the Japanese word
おおきい most likely because the kanji best expresses the nuance she or he wanted.

The dictionary doesn't list this association of 巨 with おおきい simply because
it's not common. The dictionary doesn't set rules on what kanji can be used
for what Japanese words; it simply _records_ most _common_ associations
between kanjis and Japanese words.

**Edit:** I've come across this use of 巨: 「それは異様に頭の巨きい少年であった」from "Hanakatami
(花筐)" (1937) by Dan Kazuo (檀一雄)。There is one more instance down the same page.
At the first occurrence, there is a furigana in my copy but I don't know
whether it was added by an editor. For this case, the furigana isn't necessary
because the context and the きい part of 巨きい unambiguously imply its reading.

. . . The point I'd like to make here is that the simplistic view that each
kanji has a few fixed readings is a product of the simplified, standardized
education after World War II in Japan. Old writers, as well as good writers
today, don't take that view. They just use whatever kanji is "best".

Below Ci3 asks a perfectly valid question: [to interpret his/her question in
my own way] How can one then decide what's a good kanji for each Japanese
word? Even though it's a good question, there is no good answer to it. Suppose
you are writing English and trying to describe a color. You wonder whether you
should write "red", "deep red", "scarlet", or "red-purple". Which is best?
There is no answer to such a question. You can safely say that "green" is an
extremely bad choice to describe the color and you can also say that "red" is
always the safest choice although it may not best describe the color you are
looking at. . . . Same idea. Although 大 is always the safest choice for おおきい,
it may not be the best one for the instance.
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Though different from the example you gave, there _are_ examples where the
furigana even contradicts the okurigana(!!)

For example, the word [崇まふ]{あがまう} - the furigana there gives the pronunciation
of the _entire word_ - has a spelling which ends in ふ, but the pronunciation
ends with う. Another example is [目合ひ]{まぐわい} - there is no ひ at the end of the
pronunciation.†

As for "why?" - both of these examples, along with all the others I could
find, are considered archaisms, from before the language reforms of the
mid-1900's. They're not something you'd run into often. I have no idea if
they're even commonly known to native speakers _(I only encountered them when
they broke the okurigana logic in a dictionary parser I worked on)_

* * *

† _For anyone who disagrees: both the English-Japanese database JMDict and the
Japanese dictionary 広辞苑 agree that these are the correct pronunciations_
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