絵に描いた餅 in Japanese

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Etymology: From 絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”). Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake”. Etymology templates: {{com|ja|絵|に|描く|餅|t1=picture, painting|t3=to draw|t4=rice cake|tr1=e|tr3=kaku|tr4=mochi}} 絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”), {{m-g|a drawing of a rice cake}} “a drawing of a rice cake”, {{lit|a drawing of a rice cake}} Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake” Head templates: {{head|ja|noun}} 絵に描いた餅

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "ja",
        "2": "絵",
        "3": "に",
        "4": "描く",
        "5": "餅",
        "t1": "picture, painting",
        "t3": "to draw",
        "t4": "rice cake",
        "tr1": "e",
        "tr3": "kaku",
        "tr4": "mochi"
      },
      "expansion": "絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”)",
      "name": "com"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "a drawing of a rice cake"
      },
      "expansion": "“a drawing of a rice cake”",
      "name": "m-g"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "a drawing of a rice cake"
      },
      "expansion": "Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake”",
      "name": "lit"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From 絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”). Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake”.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "ja",
        "2": "noun"
      },
      "expansion": "絵に描いた餅",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "Japanese",
  "lang_code": "ja",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Japanese entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "pie in the sky, castle in the air; a useless thing or idea"
      ],
      "id": "en-絵に描いた餅-ja-noun-6NclP5~K",
      "links": [
        [
          "pie in the sky",
          "pie in the sky"
        ],
        [
          "castle in the air",
          "castle in the air"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) pie in the sky, castle in the air; a useless thing or idea"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "絵に描いた餅"
}

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{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "ja",
        "2": "絵",
        "3": "に",
        "4": "描く",
        "5": "餅",
        "t1": "picture, painting",
        "t3": "to draw",
        "t4": "rice cake",
        "tr1": "e",
        "tr3": "kaku",
        "tr4": "mochi"
      },
      "expansion": "絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”)",
      "name": "com"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "a drawing of a rice cake"
      },
      "expansion": "“a drawing of a rice cake”",
      "name": "m-g"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "a drawing of a rice cake"
      },
      "expansion": "Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake”",
      "name": "lit"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From 絵 (e, “picture, painting”) + に + 描く (kaku, “to draw”) + 餅 (mochi, “rice cake”). Literally, “a drawing of a rice cake”.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "ja",
        "2": "noun"
      },
      "expansion": "絵に描いた餅",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "Japanese",
  "lang_code": "ja",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Japanese compound terms",
        "Japanese entries with incorrect language header",
        "Japanese idioms",
        "Japanese lemmas",
        "Japanese nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "pie in the sky, castle in the air; a useless thing or idea"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "pie in the sky",
          "pie in the sky"
        ],
        [
          "castle in the air",
          "castle in the air"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) pie in the sky, castle in the air; a useless thing or idea"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "絵に描いた餅"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable Japanese dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-10-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-10-01 using wiktextract (28c0cbd and a979ada). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"絵に描いた餅" meaning in Japanese

Noun