About the affix ごっこ


I've been wondering about the affix ごっこ when it's a prefix and when it is a
suffix. There's the word ごっこ遊び, for example, that means "children's game" or
"game of make-believe"; but there's also a song named さよならごっこ that would mean,
according some translations, something like "make-believe farewell" or
"pretending to say goodbye". But the question is: I think that translating
さよならごっこ as "pretending to say goodbye" is purely interpretative because of the
context of the song; I say that because it's written in Jisho that ごっこ can
also mean "something done together". I, however, have not found even one
example that ごっこ has this meaning. Can someone tell me some expressions in
that ごっこ has the meaning of "something done together"? If there's any rule
about the meaning that ごっこ plays in a phrase, please tell me too.




I think you can forget that definition "something done together". That's
simply an over- (or false-) generalization. And ごっこ is basically a suffix.
ごっこ遊び is a word that collectively refers to many `○○ごっこ` words. (Maybe this
could be compared to how the English suffix "-ism" came to mean "doctrine" or
"theory" by itself.)

さよならごっこ is a made-up word. Without seeing the actual context, my impression of
this word is someone who is _jokingly_ keeping distance from someone to see
what will happen, knowing they will get together again soon. It's nowhere near
"two people saying goodbye to each other".




I think you can forget that definition "something done together". That's
simply an over- (or false-) generalization. And ごっこ is basically a suffix.
ごっこ遊び is a word that collectively refers to many `○○ごっこ` words. (Maybe this
could be compared to how the English suffix "-ism" came to mean "doctrine" or
"theory" by itself.)

さよならごっこ is a made-up word. Without seeing the actual context, my impression of
this word is someone who is _jokingly_ keeping distance from someone to see
what will happen, knowing they will get together again soon. It's nowhere near
"two people saying goodbye to each other".

