お約束

[kiyominai]

I stumbled upon this word and thought you may think it's the polite form of the word "promise," it's not.

It means, cliche.

I didn't find the word in my dictionary, but i found someone online who did
お約束[oyakusoku] | Japanese words of anime fans, by anime fans, for anime fans

I'm talking about it because in my novel, I acme across "お約束" but it didn't make sense in the context.

My question is, does anyone know how the word "promise" came to become "cliche" when the "O" is added as the prefix?

 

[biscuit00]

It's just a prefix to make the word more polite and beautiful. both 「ご」Or 「お」can be used, you can read up where to use go and where to use o- elsewhere.
Such as お茶、お寺、ご注意、お冷、お水、など。
It's more commonly applied in formal or polite language though.

 

[nekojita]

This particular usage of お約束 has made it into 大辞泉 (major Japanese dictionary), so it is differentiated just from the polite version (see here).

約束 itself has a broader meaning than "promise" in English, and I would imagine the "cliche" meaning comes directly from, for example, meaning four here (Japanese-English dictionary link).

A similar word is お決まり.

 

[Toritoribe]

I stumbled upon this word and thought you may think it's the polite form of the word "promise," it's not.

It means, cliche.

I didn't find the word in my dictionary, but i found someone online who did
お約束[oyakusoku] | Japanese words of anime fans, by anime fans, for anime fans

I'm talking about it because in my novel, I acme across "お約束" but it didn't make sense in the context.

My question is, does anyone know how the word "promise" came to become "cliche" when the "O" is added as the prefix?

It IS in the dictionary.

おやくそく【御約束】
２ 特定の状況で、大多数から次の展開として期待される物事。また、映画や小説などで、定番の状況設定や典型的な物語の展開。「夏の浜辺で―の曲」「―の落ちで爆笑する」「医者といえば白衣姿が―だ」

おやくそく【御約束】の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

約束 also means fate, destiny or settled plan. "Expectable developments of things/situations" is from this meaning.

やくそく【約束】
5 〔因縁・運命・予定〕

困苦は人生の約束である
Mankind is predestined to suffer.／It is man's lot to suffer.
彼には有望な将来［教授のいす］が約束されている
「A great future [A professor's chair] is 「waiting for [assured] him.

やくそく【約束】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - goo辞書


EDIT:
Oops. I didn't notice until now that nakojita-san posted the same answer at the very same time.

 

[kiyominai]

Thank you all for your input.

I guess it wasn't in any of my dictionary sources that I often use, but I have inputted the meaning into my translation memory database