First opened Tuesday, March 27, 2007
では
では
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.
then, well, so
De wa is a clipping of ではないか (de wa nai ka, “isn't it; might it be”).
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
では始めましょう。
Then let us begin.
ではこれで失礼します。
I am afraid I must be going now.
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- Hedged“Clipping of ではないか (de wa nai ka, “isn't it; might it be”)”
Source: Wiktionary: では (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.