できる

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

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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.

• “/ideku/ → /deku/ → /dekuru/ → /dekiru/”
• “Originally appears in the Man'yōshū of 759 CE and other Old Japanese texts as 出(い)で来(く) (ideku), as a compound of 出(い)で (ide, “going out”, the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 出(い)づ (izu, ancient idu, ancient form of modern 出(で)る (deru, “to come out, to go out”))) + 来(く) (ku, “to come”, the ancient form of modern 来(く)る (kuru, “to come”)). The original meaning was “to come out”, extending in figurative contexts to a sense of “to appear, to become manifest”.”
• “Phonologically, ideku shifted to deku by the mid-1400s in the Muromachi period, as the low-tone initial i dropped out, vaguely similar to the way that unstressed syllables in English may disappear. This deku then underwent a common shift in Muromachi Japanese to become dekuru, where all bigrade verbs and irregular verbs underwent a shift that included a -ru on the end of the plain form, in part through a fusion of the 連(れん)体(たい)形(けい) (rentaikei, “attributive form”) that has always ended in -ru for these verbs, and the 終(しゅう)止(し)形(けい) (shūshikei, “terminal form”) that is used at the end of sentences.”
• “As a later part of this same shift, the central vowel shifted from -u- to -i- to produce dekiru, as the main vowel -i- for the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) came to be used for all conjugated forms.”
• “Over this same period, the meaning gradually shifted from “to come out” to include “to appear, to become manifest”, and from there “to come into existence anew”. This then extended further to “to occur, to happen; to be born; to be created, to be produced”, and thence “to come to fruition; to be completed, to be finished (with positive overtones)”. The underlying sense of latent existence gave rise to the meaning of “to be capable of making or producing something”, and then simply “to be able to do”.”
• Hedged“In slang contexts in the early 1800s, dekiru came to mean “to have sex”, perhaps similar to the development of the English phrases “to do it, to get some, to get it on”.”

Source: Wiktionary: できる (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.

Sound change

The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.