前代未聞

ぜん　だい　み　もん
zen dai mi mon

Sticking with the generational theme of last Friday's post, today's 四字熟語 starts with "前代" meaning "the previous generation," and ends with "未聞" meaning "not yet heard." My favorite part about this one was that when I saw it for the first time, I recognized all of the individual kanji and was able to surmise the definition on my own!

Definition: 今までに、一度も聞いたことがないこと。
Translations:
1. Completely unprecedented
2. Record-breaking
3. Worse than any of its predecessors


Definition #3 makes an important distinction about this phrase. Like Friday's 時代錯誤, today's　post is traditionally only used in one direction、according to my expert. A quick Googling will yield examples that seem to disprove her (「前代未聞の超リアルおっぱい」certainly doesn't seem like a bad thing to me...) but most of the other examples, largely from the sports world, are in reference to things like scandals, or foul play, or fixed games. Check out this link to an article with the headline 前代未聞　about the woman who disrupted a match at the Sumo Hall in Tokyo when she attempted to climb into the ring, where women are not supposed to set foot.

例文：日本には、学生の恋人がいる教師が少ないけどいる。前代未聞でわない。しかし、ニッキ ニュウ ジャブが名古屋でやった道化は前代未聞の不祥事だよ！
In Japan, it's not common for a teacher to have a sexual relationship with a student, but it happens. It's not unprecedented. However, the crazy shit that Nicky New Job did in Nagoya... there is nothing on historical record to rival a scandal like that.