First opened Sunday, October 16, 2005
頬
ほほ
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
cheek (of face)
Hoho went from popo to fofo to hoho, and appears in the Wamyō Ruijushō of 938 CE.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.
Written with 頬
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.
- “/popo/ → /fofo/ → /hoho/”
- “From Old Japanese. Appears in the mid-Heian period dictionary Wamyō Ruijushō (938 CE).”
Source: Wiktionary: 頬 (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 頬 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not ほほ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
ほお
- “[ho̞ho̞] → [ho̞ː]”
- “Derived from hoho above.”
つら
- “Of same origin as 列 (tsura, “a string or lineup of things”). Extending from the meaning of "lineup", the meaning changed to indicate the side of the items lined up. In reference to people, this came to mean the cheeks as the side of the face, and then by extension the face as a whole.”
すえみつ・すえもと・のりみち
- “Used as ateji in various names.”
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.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.