売約済み (baiyakuzumi: sold, to sell + to promise + to be settled).
I’ve always liked the perky-looking 済. It strikes me as wet (
) literature (文) atop a ladder. At the same time, the meanings seem to go all over the place, making them hard to grasp. Just consider this:
With the on-yomi of SAI, 済 means any of the following:
“to settle accounts”
返済する (hensai suru: to repay)
to give back + to settle accounts“to conclude”
完済 (kansai: full payment) complete + to conclude
未済 (misai: unsettled, unpaid) not yet + to conclude“to relieve, aid, save”
経済 (keizai: economy)
to manage (state affairs) + to aid
With the kun-yomi of sumanai, 済 means “inexcusable”:
済みません (Sumimasen: Excuse me)
This is the way to write Sumimasen! That’s exciting! But … we’re talking about something inherently inexcusable. That’s a little depressing! A native speaker said to make sense of the expression this way: “Will you excuse me, even though what I did is so awful that I shouldn’t be asking to be excused?”
With the kun-yomi of sumi, which becomes -zumi as a suffix, 済 means “to be settled”:
支払い済み (shiharaizumi: paid, settled)
to control + payment + to be settledThis last usage matches the one we saw in 売約済み (baiyakuzumi: sold). So we’ve finally settled the issue of the slippery meanings!
