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うざい uzai
Annoying, in a get-away-from-me way.
What does uzai mean?
The buzzing, crowding kind of annoying. Notifications, humidity, a song stuck in your head — all fair game. Said about a person, it means go away, and people remember hearing it.
Example
通知が多すぎてうざい。
Too many notifications. It's doing my head in.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Be careful This one carries weight. Read the meaning and the story before you say it to anyone.
Aimed at another person, this is an insult.
The story behind uzai
The parent word is うざったい, a Kanto regional adjective for something cluttered and clinging, the feeling of things swarming too close. Teenagers around Tokyo trimmed it in the 1980s, television carried the short form nationwide, and by the 1990s it was one of the defining noises of school life.
What it describes is proximity rather than evil. A mosquito is うざい; so is a group chat that will not stop, or rain that keeps threatening and never quite falls. That is why it stays usable in adult company as long as the target is a thing. Turned on a person it is blunter than it sounds in translation, closer to a shove than to a complaint.
Get uzai in your pocket
うざい 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.
