余裕（yoyuu) is a great word to learn in Japanese because it has no direct translation to a word in English with the same nuance, and also because you’re likely to hear in in daily life once in awhile.
Generally speaking, 余裕 represents some sort of resource, and oftentimes it is used in the negative sense to specify that resource is lacking.
It’s uses can be broken up into four broad categories: space, time, money, and emotion. I’ll go over an example of each so you can see the usage.
Space
- うちの部屋に置く余裕がないよ。
- I have no space to put (that) in my room.
Time
- 今日はばたばたしててゆっくりする余裕があまりなかった。
- Today I was very busy and had almost no time to relax.
Money
- 俺、金がなくて新車を買う余裕ないかも。
- I don’t have (much) money and might not be able to afford a new car.
Emotion
This usage is the hardest to understand and the most difficult to translate to English. You can think of it as a mental energy, or “bandwidth” of sorts.
- 彼は余裕で敵を倒しました。
- He defeated his enemy with ease.
I have a strange memory where at times I can forget important things, but sometimes I can clearly remember the first time I heard a Japanese word. This is true for 余裕 – I first heard it playing an old Playstation snowboarding game called ‘SSX’. There was a Japanese character, and when she did some great trick she yelled “余裕! 余裕!” which I now understand is similar to the last example above, and basically means she was bragging about how easily she outdid the other participants.
References
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/78609/m0u/余裕/
This is my first time on your site, I really like it. I’ve got it bookmarked now.
But anyway, I had heard 余裕 before in the type of context given in the last example, and I never quite understood it, so thank you for writing this post. I really love words and phrases like these that have a lot of meaning to them that’s not always easy to translate. Reminds me of がんばる and 仕方が無い.
Thanks claymyer5 for reading my site and for the compliment. Glad my explanation helped you.
I have a lot of past articles so feel free to check them out. Also if you have any suggestions for topics to post on (words, phrases, whatever), let me know.
I’ve been in Japan for a few years and recently, I’ve been picking up on 余裕 as in the emotional sense… I had a general understanding but have been unable to really connect with the meaning until now. I know this piece is quite old, but thanks!
Thanks great, glad it was helpful!
I hope you have developed some 余裕 with respect to your Japanese ability while living in Japan (:
Hi,
I just visited Japan after a long time. I spent a lot of my working life there. During this trip it was a vacation for me and my experience was quite different from when I worked there. A Japanese friend said to me you have “余裕” and I realised the remark was in reference to the emotional space I had.
Thanks for your information.
last week an instructor said to me 余裕がまだないね. he was quite surprised I didn’t know this very common expression. as i was when my japanese teacher explained it to me. it felt like the word had been invented to describe me/my way of doing things. I decided to look it up to send to a friend bc this thing just happened which is 100% me + my use of time which can’t really be put into any other words and that’s how i landed on this page. it’s perfect thanks. this is my favourite part of learning languages, finding words to explain concepts you hadn’t even thought of verbalising while giving you a glimpse into the worldview unique or special to another culture and enriching your life in the process.
Thanks much for the comment! It’s good to know my blog is helping people out.
I agree that finding words to explain concepts you haven’t thought of is one of the great parts of learning a foreign language.
I have over 500 other articles on my blog, I hope you can find some others things to help out in your studies (: