"nobiru": growing, stretching, smoothing, extending, and spreading
のびる, or nobiru, is one of my favorite Japanese words. I just love how it evokes growing and stretching. It’s no accident that Nobuko (for girls, 伸子 is one version) is the 42nd most popular Japanese name, and Nobuo (for boys) is not far behind.
nobiru can mean extending or elongating. It can mean straightening out or smoothing or flattening something that’s curved or scrunched up or wrinkled. It can mean stretching in the sense of losing elasticity, like the waist band of a pair of underwear, or a sweater which has lost its shape. It can mean your hair growing out. It can mean reaching out your hand to grab something. It can mean a train line running to somewhere. It can mean paint spreading out evenly over a surface.
Take care not to leave your noodles in the hot broth too long: they will nobiru, meaning they will become limp and flaccid and slack, losing their resilience and springiness, their body—their koshi, in other words (quick, add that to your list of untranslatable Japanese words).
Of course when your Zoom call goes over—extends past its scheduled end time— that’s also nobiru, although that would usually be written as 延びる instead of 伸びる. The negative nuance here is an exception—normally nobiru is unalloyedly positive. And of course nobiru can be used for abstract concepts, in the sense of develop or improve, such as your Japanese skills, or thriving, like an economy.
The character 伸 is a person standing next to a bolt of lightning extending all the way from the heavens to the earth—get it? So it's a compound ideograph (合意文字)—a combination of two elements that both represent ideas.
Wait, though. There’s another NOB word we know—noberu (述べる), meaning to say, tell, mention, relate, state. Could that possibly be related to nobiru? Well, of course it is. Noberu is all about words extending out of your mouth.
There’s much more we could say about nobiru, like the expression se-nobi (背伸び, on your tippy-toes), or nobi-nobi, meaning relaxed and carefree, or expressions like 羽を伸ばす (hane wo nobasu, spread your wings).
But actually we’re most interested in what it means for lips to nobiru (and chijimu). Ed wants to know, for his Kawabata translation.