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First opened Monday, September 12, 2005

化学

かがく

  • head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1

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).

chemistry

JLPT N3Commonnoun (common) (futsuumeishi)漢語 · Sino-JapaneseCompoundBorrowing

Kagaku is Chinese 化學 (huàxué, literally “change + study”), first cited in Japanese in an 1860 translation of a Dutch text.

Taken apart

  1. 化

    か

    change

  2. 学

    がく

    study

Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.

Written with 化学

In a sentence

We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.

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.

Not settled

Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.

  • “Orthographic borrowing from Chinese 化學 /化学 (huàxué, literally “change + study”).”
  • Hedged“Apparently first cited anywhere in an 1855 text in Chinese, in the diary of noted intellectual Wang Tao. First cited in Japanese in an 1860 translation of a Dutch text by 川(かわ)本(もと)幸(こう)民(みん) (Kawamoto Kōmin).”
  • “Superseded older term 舎(せい)密(み) (seimi).”

Source: Wiktionary: 化学 (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).

Other readings of 化学 on the same Wiktionary page

These describe other words written the same way, not かがく. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.

ばけがく

  • “Reanalysis of 化(か)学(がく) (kagaku) above, as a compound of 化(ば)け (bake, 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 化(ば)ける (bakeru, “to transform”)) + 学(がく) (-gaku, “-logy, -graphy”). Alternative reading sometimes used to differentiate 化(か)学(がく) (kagaku) from 科(か)学(がく) (kagaku, “science”), which it has become an exact homophone of.”
  • “First cited to a 1967 novel by 大(おお)原(はら)富(とみ)枝(え) (Ōhara Tomie).”

What the labels mean

漢語 Sino-Japanese
Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
Compound
Two or more words or stems joined into one.
Borrowing
Taken over from another language.

Related in the dictionary

The words JMdict points to from this word's sense. A word that has opened links to its day; the others are named as JMdict writes them.

See also

Also read かがく

Other words so far with exactly this reading and another spelling, oldest first, with the pitch accent each entry shows: where they differ, the pitch tells the words apart in speech. Only the readings are compared; nothing is claimed about how the words are related.

  • 化学This word

    chemistry

    か↓がく head-high (atamadaka)

  • 科学

    science

    か↓がく head-high (atamadaka)

More like this

Other words so far that share a part, a process or a layer with this one, closest first. Each tag says what is shared; nothing here is a claim beyond what the entries already show.

Also opened on September 12

The words that opened on this day of the year in other years, oldest first. They share only the date: nothing else links them.

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Origins quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Kaikki.org; meanings & kanji from JMdict, KANJIDIC2 & KRADFILE (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0) — how we check it