誇りと喜び hokori to yorokobi Pride and Joy
誇りと喜び (hokori to yorokobi), pride and joy, is two plain nouns joined by and, and younger in Japanese than it looks: the dictionary's first citation for the noun 誇り is of 1910, and a year later a soldier home from his service wrote that he could not keep the pair down.
Abstract
誇りと喜び, hokori to yorokobi, pride and joy, is a plain Japanese phrase, two nouns joined by and, and younger than it looks: its noun 誇り is first cited in 1910, and by 1911 a soldier home from his service could not keep the pair down. In every witness read here it names two feelings a person has, not, as the English idiom does, the person one is proudest of.
Overview
The sense. Plain standard Japanese; not a set expression, it is what the words say. 誇りと喜び is two nouns joined by and, pride and joy. In the witnesses read here the pair is two feelings someone has: a soldier's at his homecoming, a mother's at a birth, a painter's at a triumph.
The words. 誇り hokori: デジタル大辞泉 誇ること。名誉に感じること。また、その心, to be proud; to feel as an honor; and that feeling, with 一家の誇り, the pride of a family. 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives the noun as the nominalized verb 誇る and dates it late: its first citation is Shimazaki Tōson's 家 of 1910–11, where the word is written 矜持 and read ホコリ. The noun is Meiji in the dictionary's record, though the verb is old [1]. 喜び yorokobi: よろこぶこと。うれしく思うこと, rejoicing; feeling glad, opposed to 悲しみ, with second senses of a congratulation and a celebration; cited from a glossed sutra of about 850 and from the 源氏物語 [2]. と to is and, joining nouns.
The text in English. Pride and joy and 誇りと喜び are the same two nouns in the same order. The one difference is that English has made pride and joy a fixed idiom for a beloved person or thing, and Japanese, in the witnesses read here, has not, so the Japanese reads as two feelings rather than one phrase [3].
The historical record
1911. 誇りと喜び, a soldier home. A one-year volunteer's memoir opens with his homecoming: 僕は男兒當然の義務を果したに過ぎぬと思ひ、此の過分の歡迎に對して心中聊か忸怩たるものもあつたが、それでも幾分の誇りと喜びとを禁じ得なかつたのである, I thought I had only done what a man must, and felt some embarrassment at the excessive welcome; and yet I could not keep down a certain pride and joy. The pair appears with the と repeated, 誇りと喜びと, which is the older way of writing A and B [4].
1913 and 1918. A book on prenatal care promises the mother who has done well 滿足と共に勝利の誇りと喜び, satisfaction, and the pride and joy of victory [5]; and Tanizaki, in 金と銀, gives the pair to a painter who feels 世界を征服した王者のやうな誇りと喜び, the pride and joy of a king who has conquered the world, with fear taking root beneath it [6]. The National Diet Library's full-text search finds 164 books with the phrase to 1946 [7], and these three show what the pair is for: a homecoming, a birth, a triumph with a shadow.
What is not a source. The phrase has no author. The 1937 school-law digest that a first search returned for 誇りと喜び matched the two words on a page, not the phrase, and is not a witness.
Today. In English pride and joy is an idiom for a person or thing one is proudest of, and the encyclopedia's page for the words is a list of songs, the first of them Marvin Gaye's of 1963 [8]. A rendering keeps both nouns, in that order; the と repeated in 誇りと喜びと is the older written form of the 1911, 1913 and 1918 witnesses, and a single と is the modern one.
A reading
誇りと喜び is plain and younger than it looks: the noun 誇り itself is first cited in 1910, and a year later a soldier home from his service could not keep the pair down. In every witness read here it is two feelings a person has, a homecoming's, a birth's, a triumph's; Japanese has not frozen it into the English idiom for the one person you are proudest of.
References
- 「誇り」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/誇り
- 「喜び」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/喜び
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「誇り」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/誇り
- 水暮, 『奮闘記』, 厚生堂, 1911, printed p. 1, scan 4. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/888121/1/4
- 下田次郎, 『胎教』, 実業之日本社, 1913, scan 92. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/937405/1/92
- 谷崎潤一郎, 『金と銀』, 春陽堂, 1918, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/959424/1/27
- National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 誇りと喜び, searched again 26 September 2026: 164 books to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=誇りと喜び
- "Pride and joy", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_joy