What is the difference between 惹かれる and 引かれる?


I was texting a Japanese person, and I saw 引かれる【ひかれる】for the first time, so I
searched for its meaning. I saw contradictory explanations and translations,
some sources say it is the same as 惹かれる｛ひかれる｝, as in being attraced to someone
or something.

One of the examples I found:

> 「蛾｛が｝は光｛ひかり｝に引｛ひ｝かれる」

After I had answered the text the other person explained to me that both of
the kanjis have the same reading, but they mean the exact opposite, so 引｛ひ｝かれる
would be mean being put off by someone or something. I felt really stupid and
went back to research mode, and I found out about ドン引｛ひ｝かれる, which should mean
to be put off.

My assumption is that both kanjis used to mean the same, but somewhat recently
ドン引｛ひ｝き appeared in the common vocabulary, but it was too long so people
started to drop the ドン part. Is this correct?




「引{ひ}く」 and 「惹{ひ}く」 are originally the same word "hiku". The verb "hiku"
already had different meanings when Japanese was merely a spoken language.
After learning the kanji from the Chinese and creating the kana on our own, we
started writing some of our same original words differently according to the
meanings that they are used for.

In the case of "hiku", we decided to use 「引く」 for physical "pulling" and 「惹く」
for psychological "attracting". The "connection" between the two should be
clearly seen.

What makes your question this time unnecessarily tricky is that you have
brought the new colloquial/slangy meaning of 「引く」 to the table. That meaning
is "to get turned off", "to be put off", etc. 「ドン引{び}く」 is the emphatic form
of 「引く」 only for that slang meaning.

If you are ドン引く-ing, you actually are pulling your body physically and/or
pulling/drawing your mind back mentally from something. So, there still is the
notion of "moving away from something" left in the new slang meaning.

If you compared the new meaning of 「引く」 to the original meaning of 「惹く」,
however, the two meanings would seem quite opposite. Unless I misread your
question, that is what you wanted to say.

The last thing I would like to mention is that it is nothing new that a word
acquires a new colloquial/slang meaning that is very different from its
"original" meaning.

Take 「適当{てきとう}」 vs. 「テキトー」, for instance. That is "appropriate" vs. "random".
Pretty random, yeh?

「やばい」 vs. 「ヤバい」 for "chancy", "dubious", etc. vs. "great", "cool", etc.

This, however, is hardly a Japanese-only phenomena. Think of what happened
meaning-wise to words such as "awesome", "bad", "sick", etc. If I have to
learn the new meanings for those, you will have to learn the new meanings of
the words I mentioned above.




「引{ひ}く」 and 「惹{ひ}く」 are originally the same word "hiku". The verb "hiku"
already had different meanings when Japanese was merely a spoken language.
After learning the kanji from the Chinese and creating the kana on our own, we
started writing some of our same original words differently according to the
meanings that they are used for.

In the case of "hiku", we decided to use 「引く」 for physical "pulling" and 「惹く」
for psychological "attracting". The "connection" between the two should be
clearly seen.

What makes your question this time unnecessarily tricky is that you have
brought the new colloquial/slangy meaning of 「引く」 to the table. That meaning
is "to get turned off", "to be put off", etc. 「ドン引{び}く」 is the emphatic form
of 「引く」 only for that slang meaning.

If you are ドン引く-ing, you actually are pulling your body physically and/or
pulling/drawing your mind back mentally from something. So, there still is the
notion of "moving away from something" left in the new slang meaning.

If you compared the new meaning of 「引く」 to the original meaning of 「惹く」,
however, the two meanings would seem quite opposite. Unless I misread your
question, that is what you wanted to say.

The last thing I would like to mention is that it is nothing new that a word
acquires a new colloquial/slang meaning that is very different from its
"original" meaning.

Take 「適当{てきとう}」 vs. 「テキトー」, for instance. That is "appropriate" vs. "random".
Pretty random, yeh?

「やばい」 vs. 「ヤバい」 for "chancy", "dubious", etc. vs. "great", "cool", etc.

This, however, is hardly a Japanese-only phenomena. Think of what happened
meaning-wise to words such as "awesome", "bad", "sick", etc. If I have to
learn the new meanings for those, you will have to learn the new meanings of
the words I mentioned above.

