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ドン引き donbiki
Everyone leaned back at once.
What does donbiki mean?
The visible, physical recoil when something goes too far. The room goes quiet and every chair moves back a few centimetres.
Example
冷蔵庫の奥から出てきたものにドン引きした。
What came out of the back of the fridge made me recoil.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Friends only Casual. Natural with friends, out of place at work or with strangers.
The story behind donbiki
The ドン in ドン引き is the same emphatic prefix as in どん底, rock bottom, and 引く has meant to be turned off, to back away inwardly, since long before phones. Put them together and you get recoil with a drum roll: not disapproval in the abstract, but a room physically leaning back.
One popular account traces it to film and television crews, where pulling the camera back to a wide shot is called 引く. It is a satisfying story and may be true, but treat it as a theory. What is certain is that variety television carried 引く into everyday speech late last century, and that the word names an audience reaction first, an opinion second.
Get donbiki in your pocket
ドン引き is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
