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In the sentence:

> 田中さんは諦めきれなかった。

what is the function/meaning of きれる? I assume the sentence means "Tanaka
didn't give up", but how does it differ from 諦めなかった？
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2016-05-04T22:22:36.420
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grammar compound-verbs
Compound verb with きれる
Ahm.... I think I would like to say, it is Yes or actually in the end **No**.

Here, **[切れる, the original verb, meaning"to cut" turnd into the meaning of
"can not do", "could not
do"...](http://d.hatena.ne.jp/junkai4212/20151207/1449449183)**

From the link

> ●二つの「切れる」
>
> 「切れる」には、他動詞「切る」から可能動詞になった「切れる」と、自動詞の「切れる」とがある。

Translation

> 2 meanings of 「切れる」
>
> About the verb,「切れる」，there are 2 -- derivative -- meanings. The original is
> "to cut" and it turned into the potential verb, one is transitive, the other
> is intransitive.

( Your question's is intransitive, considering the nature of the meaning of
the sentence )

So here, the verb 「切れる」 is used as the potential verb, and the meaning of the
sentence is

"Tanaka san **could not** give up".

Thank you.
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2016-05-05T01:01:45.330
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The verb 切る, besides meaning "to cut", can also be used as a suffix to a verb
in the pre-masu form (i.e. 食べ) to mean "to do something completely".

Therefore 諦めきれない would mean "cannot completely give up".

Other places where this is used are verbs like 待ちきれない (can't wait) or 理解しきれない
(can't completely understand).

[Here](http://selftaughtjapanese.com/2015/03/09/japanese-verb-
suffix-%E3%80%9C%E3%81%8D%E3%82%8B-kiru/) is a page which has a lot more
examples of ~切る (written by me)

EDIT: Kentaro Tomono pointed out highly that I had not responded to the
original poster's question about the difference between "諦めなかった".

As 諦めなかった simply means "he didn't give up", it lacks the meaning of "not being
able to" which is present in 諦めきれなかった.

A more interesting question would be the difference between 諦められなかった. Here, I
would say 諦めきれなかった, having the concept of not "completely" able to do
something, would have greater emphasis. Or it might be more appropriate to say
he was torn between giving up and continuing on, so at some point he had
partially given up (諦めかけた）but never completely.

I think changing the original sentence to simply use 諦められなかった would be OK and
not have a major change in meaning.
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