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So it's tobi, or more precisely tobisagari and in English "jump down" (which I would not expect as a non-native speaker - I would think you can only go down if you jump off something). I was also under the impression that for strong connections there is a directional indication, where nobi is sideways or upwards but when towards the edge it's a sagari. I'm not very strong in (Japanese) terms.
Over the years, both posts here and on SL have indicated to me that many people are prone to be annoyed by discussion of go terms, and also even to take offence at contradictory points of view. Numbers guys tend to be irritated by lack of precision. Words guys tend to be irritated by the false precision that numbers guys try to impose. Splitting the world into numbers guys and words guys in itself is a form of imprecision that probably irritates numbers guys, but for words guys it neatly encapsulates the whole point.
To lower the temperature somewhat, let me first give a tale from last night. A lady mentioned that she had gone to a lot of trouble organising a church event and was disappointed when only three people turned up. The explanation was that British Summer Time had just come into force, overnight, but it hadn't registered with most people and they were still a-bed, or whatever. A chap then replied that it really irritates him that on the occasion of this clock change weather forecasters always sign off with inaccurate sentences such as "Don't forget to put your clocks forward. You'll be getting an extra hour of daylight." Another lady looked shocked, and asked "What's wrong with that?" Knowing that this chap was a metallurgist (and a numbers guy), I interjected, "Because it lops off an hour at the end." He beamed, and said, "Precisely!" But I then told him I agreed with both the weather forecasters and the shocked lady, because the context is what matters. It's a nice feeling to wake up in the light rather than the dark and that is what "extra hour" is referring to - as we all know! (Just as when I said "at the end" and the precisionist didn't have to ask me "at the end of what?")
Even "context" is a little imprecise. It's more like common sense but in the sense that it's a sense that's common to all of us. And I expect all but the most perverse numbers guys to know what I mean by that.
A simple example from daily life (i.e. common in yet another sense): recipes often tell you to add a pinch of salt or a knob of butter, but also tell you exactly how many ounces of flour to add. The precisionists would love to know how many grains of salt is meant by a pinch, and I can easily imagine they go goggle-eyed when the recipe says "add TWO knobs of butter", deliciously mixing up precision and imprecision. I believe there's barely a cook in any country who would be discombobulated by such a recipe.
Now, this same, strange dichotomy between precision (or, more accurately, false precision) and imprecision exists in go terms. Outside of contexts such as devising computer algorithms, go terms are inverted by words guys. They are meant as words, not numbers. Therefore, a wider context or common usage can always be assumed, and likewise imprecision in the context or usage can also be assumed. So long as it works most of the time (e.g. when no nit-picking numbers guy is around) or for the most part, that's fine.
So, when a go writer says "tobi" he is not expressing a definition. Instead, he is trying (imperfectly perhaps) to convey a movement, a change of pace, a function or whatever, and he would be perfectly happy if someone else used a different term, so long as the same idea was conveyed.
Our writer, however, may wish to add a bit of what we might call precision, but not purely
for precision's sake. Rather he wants to add colour or emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity. This is done by feel, not by reference to a definition.
Applying this to tobi, we have the following examples.
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This White 1 is described in Japanese as tobiKOMI (e.g. by Kitani in his joseki dictionary).
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But in this case the usual term would be tobiSAGARI. The context has changed. White has made a previous move up towards the centre. Sagari (downwards) emphasises the (perhaps surprising) change of direction, or contrast.
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$$ | . . X . . . . . .
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$$ | . . . X . O . . .
$$ | . . . . X O . . O
$$ | . . . 1 . O . . .
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This is another example of tobikomi. Not being a numbers guy, I can't be sure how they would assess this, but even in English (jump in) I suspect they would feel that that focus is on "in" (i.e. jump IN). In any case the focus in Japanese is on the -komi. My impression is that the sort of people who write SL entries would feel that in tobikomi the emphasis is on TOBI and a tobikomi is a just flavour of tobi, yet that's wrong. Surely in actual play even they would sense that in the example above "in" is the important word. Size doesn't matter with words.
Of course even accepting that observation doesn't solve all the problems. In the earlier example, English speakers might well not feel that it really is a "jump in" - into what? But -komi in Japanese does not quite overlap with ordinary "in" in English. It often has a stronger feeling of "in-between", and so is emphasising, with an idea of something like separation. Translators sometimes try to convey this more forceful nuance with hanekomi, for example, by rendering it (not always accurately) as "hane inSIDE" (it's really a wedge and "hane inside" can, paradoxically, often be better used for hanedashi).
This application of verbal-noun suffixes such as -komi, -dashi, -tsuke and the like applies to other terms, of course. It can be, in a way, even more complex. First off, there is the obvious point that there may not even be a suffix. A hanesagari is not a hane downwards, it is a hane THEN a sagari (likewise in hanetsugi, for example). But complexity comes in also when you consider that the first term can also vary. This is especially so with the term nobi that Dieter mentions.
The rule of thumb is that a nobi (a stretching move where a stone is added at the end of a line of stones of the same colour) is used for moves parallel to the edge of the board, sagari for moves down towards the edge, and tachi for moves near sides but up towards the centre. Within the centre area, where the geography of the board loses focus, plain old nobi is used. However, when the idea of movement or function is being stressed, and verbal suffixes such as -komi are insufficient, the term nobi can be transmogrified into things like hau (crawl) or sou (follow along), and so on. It is the
writer's decision what to use, not the decision of a lexicographer or SL editor.
To give a couple more examples. One for tobi (in a way), and one for nobi.
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$$ | . . X . . . . . .
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This is called just a shimari in Japanese. To say something like tobisagarijimari sounds just as comical in Japanese as "jump-down corner enclosure" does in English. The writer is just pointing out the corner is being shimari-ed or shut off - c'est tout. But, if for some obscure reason, you wanted to emphasise the shape, I'd be pretty sure it would be tobimagari (or magaritobi) rather than tobisagari.
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$$ | . . . . X 1 . . .
$$ | . . . X O . . . .
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In this case Black 1 is called a nobikiri, but can be a tachikiri. The point is, it is the -kiri part that it is important. If you give a definition of this in Japanese, you would have to say Black is sticking his "head" in (to the centre, or White's sphere of influence). The more idiomatic English "sticking his nose in" might convey the nuances better, but in any case -kiri is (as usual) adding more a sense of intrusive assertiveness rather than any notion of cutting.
For Dieter, even with English adverbial nouns such as "jump down", it is often the adverbial part that matters most (like -kiri above). To take a very simplistic "flavour-free" example first, imagine you are a teacher and both you and a pupil each have a book open at the same page and you are trying to get his attention on a particular phrase, but he is groping for it. From his eyes you might sense he needs to look lower down the page, so you might say "jump down a little bit". The metaphorical "jump" is really irrelevant here. You could just as easily say "skip down", "scan down", "skim down", "move down" etc, etc. The important bit is "down". But there is no special nuance to down here.
Now take an example where down is still the important word but jump has its real sense.
You are leading your little girl by the hand as she bravely walks along a wall. You reach the end of the wall. Then you might say, "Can you be really brave and jump down?" You would not say "can you jump" because she would probably just do a little hop on the wall. You want to emphasise jump, but down still has the edge in importance.
But, as expected, your little girl gets braver by the day and mother may see her on the wall
without your guiding hand. Mother might scream, "Get down from that wall!!!" Down is not only the important word, it has acquired a VERY strong connotation of NOT UP and on the pavement.
We have to consider the Japanese verbal suffixes like -sagari, -komi, -dashi in exactly the same flavoursome way. But unfortunately, for SL editors and others, Japanese flavours are usually not quite the same as English flavours, and even British English flavours are not always the same as American English flavours.
However, there is no need to despair. Just follow most people in real life and embrace imprecision, and scorn false precision.