First opened Thursday, July 19, 2007
紅葉
こうよう
- flat (heiban)
How to read it: a line over a kana means the voice is high there, and ↓ marks where it drops. A kana with no line is low. With no ↓ the pitch stays high to the end and does not drop even on a following particle (が, は).
fall colors (of leaves)
Kōyō began as kou jepu: Middle Chinese 紅葉, literally “crimson, red + leaf”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
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.
- “/kou jepu/ → /koːjefu/ → /koːjeu/ → /koːjoː/”
- “From Middle Chinese compound 紅葉 (MC huwng yep, literally “crimson, red + leaf”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 紅葉 (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).
Other readings of 紅葉 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not こうよう. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
もみじ
- “⟨momi₁ti⟩ → */momʲiti/ → /momʲidi/ → /momid͡ʑi/ → /momiʑi/”
- “Shift from Old Japanese 紅葉 (momi₁ti → momichi).”
- “The 連用形 (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of classical verb 紅葉づ (momizu, “to turn, change color; said of leaves”).”
- “Orthographic borrowing from Chinese 紅葉 /红叶 (hóngyè), see kōyō below.”
もみじば
- “Shift from Old Japanese 紅葉 (momi₁tiba → momichiba).”
- “Can be parsed as a compound of 紅葉ぢ (momiji, the 連用形 (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of classical verb 紅葉づ (momizu), “to turn in autumn, said of leaves”) + 葉 (ha, “leaf”). The ha changes to ba as an instance of rendaku (連濁).”
あかは・あけは
- “Other various nanori readings.”
What the labels mean
- 漢語 Sino-Japanese
- Words built from Chinese-derived morphemes — borrowed from Chinese or coined in Japan out of Chinese parts — read with on'yomi.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.