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ゆるい yurui
Pleasantly low-effort.
What does yurui mean?
Loose rules, soft edges, nothing too intense — a club, a drawing style, a group chat. It can also mean sloppy, so tone decides.
Example
うちの部活、ルールがゆるくて居心地がいい。
My club has loose rules and it's really comfortable.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
The story behind yurui
ゆるい means loose in the plainest sense: a loose screw, a loose rule, a loose knot. Its rise as a compliment says something about the decades it grew up in. Against a culture of effort, precision and long hours, calling something slack became praise.
The clearest evidence is the whole category of ゆるキャラ, the deliberately unpolished local mascots that became a national craze in the 2000s. A ゆるい drawing, a ゆるい group chat, a ゆるい club: all of them promise that nobody will demand much of you. The old negative sense still lurks though. Loose standards and loose work are also ゆるい, and tone alone decides which you meant.
Get yurui in your pocket
ゆるい 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.
