Kuidaore: Osaka's word for eating until you drop (食い倒れ)

Kuidaore (食い倒れ), Osaka’s word for its love of eating, is usually translated “eating until you drop”, but its dictionary meaning is sharper: spending yourself broke on food. The kanji say it plainly: 食, eat, and 倒, fall over. Eat, and keep eating, until something gives way.

What the kanji say

食 (shoku) means to eat, or food. Its oldest form seems to show a mouth, upside down, over a bowl of food, though some scholars see a lid instead. It’s the kanji in 食べる (taberu), the everyday verb, and in 食う (kuu), its blunt, casual cousin. 食い (kui) is the stem of 食う, which is why the word is kuidaore and not tabedaore.

倒 (tou) means to fall over or topple. The 亻 on its left is a person, and 到 on the right gives the sound. 倒れる (taoreru) is to fall down. Added to the end of another word, 倒れ becomes daore, so 食い plus 倒れ is kuidaore.

Fall over, or go under?

Here’s what the English “eat until you drop” leaves out. 倒れる isn’t only for people falling down. A company can 倒れる too: it goes under. And on the end of another word, 倒れ means doing something until you’re broke.

So the dictionary meaning of 食い倒れ is bringing ruin on yourself by spending too much on food. Eating until you drop is the picture; eating until your money runs out is the meaning. The video gives you both, and you need both to make sense of the saying below.

The same ending makes 着倒れ (kidaore), from 着る (kiru), to wear: spending your fortune on fine clothes.

Kyoto’s clothes, Osaka’s food

Put the two together and you get a well-known old saying: 京の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ. Kyoto goes broke on clothes, and Osaka goes broke on food. The 京 here is Kyoto, the old capital. Some versions add a third city, Edo, today’s Tokyo, going broke on drink.

Osaka earned its half of the saying. In the Edo period it was a great merchant city, nicknamed 天下の台所 (tenka no daidokoro), “the kitchen of the nation”. Osaka’s official tourism site links the word to that history: plenty of seafood and produce, and wealthy merchants who did business over meals, which pushed the city’s cooks to get better and better.

Today the sting has gone out of the word. Osaka wears 食い倒れ proudly, as a nickname for a city that loves to eat.

How to use it

• 大阪は食い倒れの街です。

  Oosaka wa kuidaore no machi desu.

  Osaka is the city of kuidaore.

• 京の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ。

  Kyou no kidaore, Oosaka no kuidaore.

  Kyoto goes broke on clothes, Osaka goes broke on food.

• 大阪へ食い倒れの旅に行きました。

  Oosaka e kuidaore no tabi ni ikimashita.

  I went on an eating trip to Osaka.

• あの会社、倒れそうらしいよ。

  Ano kaisha, taoresou rashii yo.

  I hear that company might go under.

• Kuidaore is a noun. You’ll meet it in phrases like 食い倒れの街 (kuidaore no machi), the city of kuidaore.
• It’s affectionate now. Calling a trip to Osaka 食い倒れ means you plan to eat a lot, not that you’ll come home bankrupt.
• 食う is casual. It’s fine in fixed words like 食いしん坊 (kuishinbou), a big eater, but on its own it sounds rough. In polite speech, say 食べる.
• 倒れる is also what people do when they collapse, as in 過労で倒れる (karou de taoreru), to collapse from overwork.

Words with the same kanji

Remember it

Picture a diner in Osaka who eats (食) one more plate, then another, until he falls over (倒), and his wallet falls over with him.

The kanji in this lesson

Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.

Draw it

Draw it

Sources

• Jisho (JMdict): 食い倒れ
• Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau: why Osaka is the city of kuidaore (in Japanese)

Written by the Chirami team with the help of AI, then checked against JMdict and KANJIDIC2. How we write lessons. Spotted a mistake? Email support@brightsmilesolutions.org.