hanahaki

English

Etymology

From Japanese 花吐き病 (hanahaki), from 花 (hana, “flower”) + 吐く (haku, “to vomit”). An invention of Matsuda Naoko (松田奈緒子) for her manga Hanahaki Otome (『花吐き乙女』).

Noun

hanahaki (uncountable)

1. (chiefly Japanese fiction) A fictional illness in which a person bearing an unrequited love coughs up flower petals until they die or their feelings are reciprocated. The disease can also be cured by a surgical procedure that removes the flowers, but this will result in them losing their feelings of affection and all memories of the person they loved.
   • 2019, Unzila Iftikhar, Before Your Eyes - Despite It All, You Still Rise‎^[1], page 9:

     The cascading emotions are
     giving me hanahaki tonight, they're
     beautiful but it's suffocating.

   • 2020, Katharine Elizabeth McCain, "Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe", dissertation submitted to Ohio State University, page 27:

     It is familiar. In that most everyone is familiar with a coffee shop and thus understands the AU’s basic premise on sight. Unlike, say, Hanahaki fics.

   • 2020, Ivy Wong, "The Cure for Hanahaki", English Literary Magazine (St. Paul's Co-Educational College, Hong Kong), page 22:

     However, to a hanahaki patient, it's probably far more terrifying for them to have the surgery to cure their feelings than the disease.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:hanahaki.