First opened Saturday, June 9, 2007
しかし
しかし
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.
however; but
Shikashi is possibly a shift from 然り (shikari, “being like so”) plus し.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: the only split Wiktionary offers is hedged (see the marked line below), and it doesn't spell the word — it describes where the sound may come from — so showing it as the word's parts 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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “/ɕikari ɕi/ → /ɕikaɕːi/ → /ɕikaɕi/”
- Hedged“Possibly a shift from 然(しか)り (shikari, “being like so”, the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of classical verb 然(しか)り (shikari, “to be like so”)) + し (shi, the 連体形 (rentaikei, “attributive form”) of past recollective auxiliary き (ki)), contracting from shikari shi to shikasshi, and then further to shikashi.”
- Hedged“The initial sense may have been parseable as that [preceding statement] being so, ..., much like English phrases such as be that as it may or that said, followed by a statement in opposition to the earlier statement.”
Source: Wiktionary: しかし (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.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.