First opened Friday, May 13, 2005
高める
たかめる
- middle-high (nakadaka): falls after mora 3
How to read it: a line over a kana means the voice is high there, and ↓ marks where it drops. A kana with no line is low. With no ↓ the pitch stays high to the end and does not drop even on a following particle (が, は).
to raise, to lift, to boost
Takameru is the root of 高い (takai, “high, tall”) plus -meru, developed from the Classical Japanese verb 高む (takamu).
Taken apart
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Written with 高
In a sentence
その小説は彼の名声を高めた。
The novel added to his reputation.
その小説は彼の名声を更に高めた。
The novel added to his reputation.
Sentences are from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), picked by fixed rules from a dated export and shown unchanged. Nobody has reviewed them one by one.
What Wiktionary says
Quoted line by line from Wiktionary's Etymology section for this reading, taken from one dated dump so it can't change underneath us. Nothing below is paraphrased.
- “高(たか) (taka, root of 高(たか)い (takai, “high, tall”)) + める (-meru, “-ify, -en”), developed from Classical Japanese 高(たか)む (takamu).”
- “Development”
- “Natural progression from Old and Classical Japanese 下(しも)二(に)段(だん)活(かつ)用(よう) (shimo nidan katsuyō, “lower bigrade conjugation”) verbs ending in -u to modern Japanese 下(しも)一(いち)段(だん)活(かつ)用(よう) (shimo ichidan katsuyō, “lower monograde conjugation”) verbs ending in -eru.”
Source: Wiktionary: 高める (dump of 2026-09-02), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Reading, meaning and part of speech from JMdict, and kanji readings from KANJIDIC2 (EDRDG).
What the labels mean
- 和語 Native Japanese
- Words that were already Japanese before Chinese vocabulary arrived — usually written with kun'yomi and often short.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.