ほいちょう・ほいちょー【包丁・庖丁】 : hoichou · hoichoo | define meaning

Cognate to Hokkaido, Hiroshima, Sado (Niigata) and Shimane ほいちょう hoichou; Fukushima ほいちょ hoicho; Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi and Yamagata ほいぢょ hoijo; Mikawa (Aichi) ほうちょん houchon; Toyama ほいちゃ hoicha; Kagawa ほうちゃ houcha; Shimane ほうち houchi; Amakusa (Kumamoto) ほちょう hochou; Amakusa (Kumamoto) and Kagoshima ほちょ hocho; Kikai (Amami) ふぉーちゃー foochaa, ほーちゅー hoochuu, ほーちょー hoochoo and ぽーちょー poochoo; Nakijin (Kunigami) ぽーちゃー poochaa; Kikai (Amami) and Okinawan ほーちゃー hoochaa; Yonaguni ふった futta [ɸu̥tˀa]; and standard Japanese ほうちょう【包丁・庖丁】 houchou "kitchen knife". Written in classical Japanese kana as はうちやう hauchiyau. Ultimately of Sinitic origin.

The term is believed to originally have meant "chef; cook", as the kanji 【庖】 means "kitchen" and 【丁】 is used to denote job titles (compare ばてい【馬丁】 batei "stable boy" and えんてい【園丁】 entei "gardener"). By the Heian period in Japan, the term also comprised the meanings of "cooking ability" and "cooking method" and eventually included the meaning of "cooking knife", likely by way of abbreviating the form【庖丁刀】 "chef knife". The spelling became 【包丁】 in 1946 as a result of the Tōyō kanji reform.