めっちゃ (meccha)

What it means

1. 1.

   Very, really, loads — a general intensifier, and in casual speech far more common than the textbook とても.

Examples with translations

• この店めっちゃ美味しいで。

  This place is seriously good.

  Note: The sentence-final で marks the speaker as Kansai.

• めっちゃ久しぶりやん！

  It's been ages!

Where it comes from

Kansai in origin, from 目茶苦茶 (mechakucha), 'absurd, chaotic'. It escaped the region through television comedy — Osaka comedians dominate Japanese variety shows — and is now used nationwide, though it still reads as slightly informal-regional in Tokyo rather than neutral.

Other forms

Romanised as:

meccha

Spellings and variants:

めちゃ, めちゃくちゃ