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You are here: Home / CM Tooltip Glossary / サバを読む

サバを読む

February 12, 2023

Yomi

さばをよむ

Rōmaji

saba o yomu

Type

idiom

Literal Meaning

read mackerels

Meaning

fudge/lie about numbers regarding oneself (e.g. age, height, weight, salary) for one’s benefit.

Synonym

ごまかす

Additional Info

Usage

サバ (mackerel) is written as 鯖 in kanji. Usually, it is used as “Xでサバを読む”, where X is what you lie about, such as your age. You can also say “Xをサバ読む”, where the particle ‘を’ is put after X to mark it as an object of the verb ‘サバ読む’.

Origin

There are a couple of theories about its origin, and the most accepted one pertains to how fishers used to count mackerels in a fish market; in the old days when refrigeration technology was not very developed, fishers had to count mackerels quickly because they spoil very quickly. Therefore, they often miscounted the numbers, and the expression サバを読む (“read mackerels”) came to acquire the meaning “count something roughly”, which in turn led to the current meaning (“lie about numbers”).

Note that 読(よ)む means “read” today but it used to mean “count (something)” — this definition is still present in a few expressions such as 票(ひょう)を読む meaning “count votes” and ‘秒(びょう)読み’ (counting seconds) meaning “(something is) seconds away from happening”.

Example

彼女が10歳もサバを読んでいたことを知って、ショックだった
I was shocked to find out that my girlfriend had been pretending she were 10 years younger than her age.

本当は身長 168cm だけど、170cm だとサバを読んだ。
I’m actually 168cm tall, but I lied about it and said I’m 170cm.

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