算盤

Taken apart

1. 算

   そろ

   abacus

2. +

3. 盤

   ばん

   tray

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

Wiktionary's text doesn't split this word, so each part is one of its kanji (with the okurigana written after it), with the reading and the dictionary meaning KANJIDIC2 gives that character — a word doesn't always use every sense of its kanji.

Written with 算盤

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.

• “Japanese sources consistently describe the abacus itself as being imported to Japan from China some time during the Muromachi period (1336–1573), although there is some disagreement as to whether this happened early in the period, or late.”
• “First attested with the reading soroban in the 1595 trilingual Latin-Portuguese-Japanese dictionary Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, Ac Iaponicum, also 羅葡日対訳辞書 (Ra-Ho-Nichi Taiyaku Jisho, “Latin-Portuguese-Japanese Translation Dictionary”) based on work originally by Ambrogio Calepino, corroborated in the Nippo Jisho of 1603.”
• “Japanese sources generally describe the soroban reading as a shift or corruption from the reading swanpan, the 唐音 (tōon, literally "Tang sound", referring to the Chinese-derived kanji readings that were borrowed into Japanese during the Tang dynasty or later) for the kanji spelling. However, this is problematic on phonological grounds:”
• “* There is no known phonological process whereby swan would become soro in Japanese.”
• “* Middle Chinese swan consistently became Japanese san in all other known instances of the Chinese reading swan for any kanji character.”
• “* The character 算 appearing as the first character in 算盤 (soroban) is also read as san, and san is similarly listed as a synonym for soroban in the 1595 dictionary entry.”
• Hedged“An alternative, albeit speculative, explanation is that this soro- is some other morpheme unrelated to the Chinese. If so, this might be native root soro-, as seen in adverb そろそろ (sorosoro, “quietly and calmly”), そろり (sorori) and そろっと (sorotto, “quietly and smoothly; slidingly, glidingly”), verb 揃う (sorou, “to be in alignment; to be in order; to match, to go together”).”
• Hedged“Notably, this term appears historically with the alternative kanji spelling 三羅盤. Given the expected Japanese readings of these characters, this may have been read as saraban. Root sara- -- and also root suru- -- also appear in various terms related to senses of smooth, gliding, sliding.”

Source: Wiktionary: 算盤 (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

混種語 Hybrid

Words that mix layers, e.g. a native part with a Chinese one.

Compound

Two or more words or stems joined into one.

Borrowing

Taken over from another language.