Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Affirmatives/reply (18)

Yeah, it's a bit fuzzy. Shogakukan's entry defs in JA say basically that it means primarily "reply, respond", but with a meaning of "agree" in there too for the set phase ; Daijirin's entry lists as a synonym. It's also used in.

Hearkening back to your initial question about affirmatives, I think Japanese, , and come closest to meaning plain-old "yes", with the caveat that they also mean other things depending on the context. Then again, Shogakukan's pretty good about including the oldest quote for first usage, and I don't see the ' or ' listed (and I'm not familiar with most of the more-recent titles shown, but quick checks suggest they're from kabuki plays or other monogatari), so these might not be old enough to meet your criteria.

Does that help?