What does こと mean?


Please don't laugh at me.

I am super new to Japanese and only really have google translate to help me. I
can find a lot of stuff online but I can't find a solid meaning for こと, and
Google translate tells me it means "about", but I'm not sold. Also if you have
any suggestions on a better (free) translator, I'm all ears.




こと can refer to many things, including:

  1. _koto_ ([this Japanese musical instrument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_\(instrument\)))
  2. to make up a cover story; glossing over
  3. ancient capital; old city
  4. difference
  5. (sound) click; tick; knock
  6. word; phrase
  7. thing; matter
  8. affair; incident; event
  9. fact
  10. situation; circumstances
  11. problem; trouble
  12. regarding ...; about ...
  13. fact that ... (used to nominalize a clause)
  14. also known as; alias
  15. oh; what a; how (e.g. how wonderful..., what a big ...)
  16. Do ...! (used to make an order)
  17. Is it ...?; Do you ...?; etc (used as a question marker)

Please don't be overwhelmed. Japanese tends to have many homophones, and
fundamental words are always like this in many languages. For example English
word [`for` has 25 definitions according to a free online English-Japanese
dictionary](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/en/for/#ej-33042).
Unsurprisingly, Google Translate is useless for a word-by-word translation of
fundamental words.

Asking for study methods is off-topic on the main site. But if you want to
study Japanese seriously, please see: [Resources for learning
Japanese](https://japanese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/756/resources-for-
learning-japanese)

