Lexical Leavings

by Tom Gally

The entries in several Japanese-English dictionaries for リップクリーム:

(a) lip cream; *(a) lip balm; ∥(a) lip salve. (Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 5th edition. The asterisk indicates an American form and the two vertical lines a British form.)

(a) lip balm [salve] (Favorite Japanese-English Dictionary)

lip chap [balm] (Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary, 3rd edition)

However, the most common word in American English, at least, for hard リップクリーム that comes in a tube is none of the translations given above. Instead, it is "chapstick," a word that appears in no English-English dictionaries I checked, presumably because of its trademark status (as "ChapStick").

For reference, here's the definition in 広辞苑:

リップ‐クリーム【lip cream】
唇が荒れないように塗るクリーム。棒状のケースに入れる。

Some Google hit counts:

"put some lip cream on" 0
"put lip cream on" 1
"put some lip balm on" 27
"put lip balm on" 70
"put some lip salve on" 0
"put lip salve on" 5
"put some lip chap on" 1
"put lip chap on" 1
"put some chapstick on" 50
"put some chap stick on" 9
"put chapstick on" 96
"put chap stick on" 38

(December 2, 2003)