Thursday Morning Etymology Lesson: karaoke

Relevant to last night’s activities (I sing karaoke most weeks on Wednesday nights), today’s word is karaoke!  Obviously the word is Japanese, but not entirely!  It translates as kara, meaning “empty”, oke, which is a shortened version of okesutora.  Okesutora is an example of the linguistic practice of Japanization of an English word, in this case, orchestra.  So karaoke means “empty orchestra”.