丼

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 丼

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.

• “Multiple possible derivations.”
• “* During the Edo period, restaurants specializing in large portions were called 慳貪屋 (kendon'ya), from 慳貪 (kendon, “greedy”, in reference to “very hungry”) + 屋 (ya, “house, store, restaurant”). The serving bowls were called 慳貪振り鉢 (kendon-buri-bachi), literally “greedy” + “in that fashion” + “bowl”. The ken portion was elided, producing donburi-bachi, and then the -hachi was dropped to produce donburi.”
• Hedged“* Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, donburi in reference to “a bowl filled with large amount of food” may be cognate with どんぶり (donburi), an onomatopoeia of something heavy plunking into deep water, or something big and soft plopping down, related to onomatopoeia どぶり (doburi), どぶん (dobun), どんぶ (donbu), and どん (don), all of generally similar meanings. The food starts with a large portion of rice, also referred to as 丼飯 (donburi meshi), which could be analyzed as “plopped-down rice”.”
• “: Donburi is also used to refer to something “rough, approximate, not finely worked”, as in the phrase 丼勘定 (donburi kanjō, “rough approximation, loose estimate”). This is consistent with a derivation from the onomatopoeia, but not from the restaurant terms.”
• Hedged“The kanji spelling shows 井 (“a well”) with a dot in the center, possibly indicating something thrown into the well. This could suggest that the Middle Chinese reading tom^X may similarly derive from onomatopoeia.”
• “Abbreviation of donburi above.”

Source: Wiktionary: 丼 (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.

Derivation

A word built from a stem plus a suffix or prefix.

Clipping

A longer word or phrase shortened in everyday use.