First opened Thursday, November 17, 2005
必ずしも
かならずしも
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.
(not) always, (not) necessarily
Kanarazushimo is 必ず (kanarazu, “certainly”) plus the emphatic しも (shimo), the same one seen in 誰しも (dareshimo).
Taken apart
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Written with 必
In a sentence
石炭は必ずしも黒くない。
Coal is not always black.
山は必ずしも緑ではない。
Mountains are not necessarily green.
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.
- “From 必(かなら)ず (kanarazu, “certainly, (negative polarity) not necessarily”) + しも (shimo, emphatic word). The しも (shimo) can also be seen in 誰しも (dareshimo) and まだしも (madashimo).”
Source: Wiktionary: 必ずしも (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.