ワンピース

1927 is an early literary point for ワンピース: counting-dictionary material based on Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Haguruma with ワン・ピイス. The source form is English one-piece, used in clothing for something made as a single unit, especially one-piece dress, one-piece suit, or one-piece bathing suit. Shogakukan's Digital Daijisen writes the source as one-piece and gives a clothing definition first. In Taisho and early Showa fashion, Western dress terms spread with 洋服, ドレス, ツーピース, and スーツ. Japanese fixed ワンピース mainly as a garment category for women and girls, while the older home-wear word あっぱっぱ was used in Kansai from the late Taisho period and appears in the 1931 Ultramodern Dictionary. The borrowing narrowed a broad English adjective into a Japanese noun. The contrast word ツーピース remains productive in fashion shops. Modern Japanese ワンピース usually means a casual or semi-formal dress with top and skirt joined. English one-piece can refer to a swimsuit, ski suit, mechanic's garment, or any object made in one part, so one-piece alone does not always mean a dress. The natural English translation is dress or one-piece dress, and it is separate from Oda Eiichiro's manga title One Piece, serialized from 1997. Example: 黒いワンピースを買った.