First opened Saturday, March 25, 2006
とても
とても
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.
very (much), greatly, exceedingly
Totemo is a clipping of とてもかくても (“no matter how, not at all”); the sense “very” is a later shift, first attested around 1910-1920.
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.
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.
- “Clipping of とてもかくても (“no matter how, not at all”), used with negative verbs. The sense "very, exceedingly" is a shift from the earlier sense of "no matter how", and was first attested around 1910-1920. Compare 全然.”
Source: Wiktionary: とても (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.
- Clipping
- A longer word or phrase shortened in everyday use.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.