First opened Saturday, August 4, 2007
なるべく
なるべく
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.
if possible, as much as possible
Narubeku is なる (naru, “to become”) plus べく (beku, adverbial form of べし), first cited to the 1890s.
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
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.
- “From なる (naru, “to become”) + べく (beku, adverbial form of べし (beshi, “possible, able; should”)).”
- “First cited to the 1890s.”
Source: Wiktionary: なるべく (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.