乱暴に煙草を灰皿に擦りつけ、酒井はぷいと出て行った。

青山真治「夜警」

Along the lines of the previous post, is it suritsuke, kosuritsuke, or nasuritsuke?

Let’s begin by eliminating the “easy” one, nasuritsukeru. What Sakai is doing in this sentence is a very concrete action, the rubbing out of a cigarette. Although its fundamental meaning is more or less the same as the others, nasuritukeru (vt.) is usually used abstractly, in the sense of “to attach one’s own responsibility or failure to another.”

Verbs with two readings often divide between concrete and abstract meanings. Consider 抱く, which can be read either as daku or idaku. The former is conventionally used when one embraces (e.g.) a person or thing, while the latter is used when one embraces (e.g.) an idea.

Nikkoku defines suritsukeru as follows: (1) to kosuritsukeru, nasuritsukeru; (2) to kosuru and thus ignite; (3) to conspicuously praise something that another does not like, so that that person might be motivated to buy it. (Let’s ignore this third meaning, which is traced back to the famous Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Nippo jisho of 1603.) An example from Natsume Sôseki uses the verb for “rubbing” one’s forehead on the floor as part of a groveling bow.

Nikkoku defines kosuritsukeru this way: to press one thing against another and nasuritsukeru; to rub with force. An example from Arishima Takeo uses the verb in the same way Sôseki did above.

An informal survey of native speakers resulted in a unanimous vote for kosuritsukeru in this case. A suggested reason was this: the verb kosuru, unlike the verb suru, denotes a repeated action, thus fitting better with the multiple passes presumably necessary to put out a cigarette.