I'm not sure if it is an adjective meaning strong, a noun meaning intention or neither.

Here is the sentence I came across.


Additional context:

The story started when people found Numata, who was unconscious, and the speaker was there with him. The speaker then told them:





It surprised the others because the speaker was a novice at boxing, and Numata is the one who was supposed to represent the dormitory in a boxing competition but lost to him.

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    What happens afterwards? I'm thinking the imperative form of 来る might make sense. – user3856370 May 10 at 13:45
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    なりたかったんので <-- It's なりたかったんで or なりたかったので, no? – Chocolate May 10 at 18:07
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    Ya, given the context, it's probably 来【こ】い, the imperative form of 来【く】る, as @user3856370 notes. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 10 at 22:28
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    There's not enough context and the sentence has an unnatural typo, so I would suggest taking a screencap of the page in question. But if I had to venture a guess based on the given information, I would hypothesize that Numata is a sports coach, essentially telling the speaker that "If you want to play in competitions, you have to prove your worth". In this case 来い would indeed be the correct meaning as noted previously. – VVayfarer May 12 at 20:01
  • I'm sorry for the typo. The consequence is that the person who said this sentence unexpectedly knocked out Numata unconscious. – George May 13 at 3:14

Here, it means「（腕{うで}ずくで）来{こ}い」, or "come (by force)".

Given the context (an informal boxing match to determine the representative boxer of the dormitory), it can literally mean "Come at me", in the sense of "Show me what you've got.". A different translation with the same underlying meaning would be "(If you want to participate in boxing competitions,) then prove your strength." It could also mean something like


which could literally mean "get inside the ring" or more figuratively something along the lines of "rise to the same stage / same level", i.e. something along the lines of


"Prove your skill, if you want to participate in competitions."

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