alt Hacker News> There are curiosities like karaage which is "kara" (crust) + "age" (fried thing).
Slightly off-topic, but “karaage” (kara + age) isn’t “crust + frying.”
The kara comes from a country name and refers to a style of cooking — it’s a “country-name + cooking method” compound.
this is the commonly accepted explanation, though whether it’s strictly historical or a later interpretation is still debated.
If you fry something without coating it, that’s usually called “su” (plain) + “age” (frying) instead.
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I somehow always keep forgetting that the kara part is that kanji that looks like the one for sugar without the kome hen.
Still, that sort of thing in general still leaves room for it having been word play. Like tempura being originally from Portuguese, having nothing to do with 天.
Japanese spelling often plays gaslighting head games.
> The kara comes from a country name and refers to a style of cooking
My understanding is that the exact etymology is unknown. It's often written with the letter that references the tang dynasty, but the thing is there's no particular reason to think the Chinese introduced the style of cooking to Japan - although it is true that there was such a thing as fried chicken in 7th century China!
Another kanji-ization of the word uses the kara from karate (meaning air or empty, in karate it's "empty hand") and I find this equally plausible as karaage is fried with a very small amount of batter ("in air").
Either way they're both essentially competing "kanji backronyms" seeking to retcon an existing word as spoken; there's no real right or wrong answer.