First opened Thursday, October 11, 2007
相撲
すもう
- 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).
sumo wrestling
Sumō is derived from the Old Japanese verb 争ふ (sumapu), “to contend, resist, compete”.
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “Derived from Old Japanese verb 争ふ (sumapu), modern 争(すま)う (sumau, “to contend, resist, compete (in sumo, for example)”).”
- Hedged“There are two leading theories regarding the derivation:”
- Hedged“* May be a nominalization of the 終(しゅう)止(し)形(けい) (shūshikei, “terminal form”) and 連(れん)体(たい)形(けい) (rentaikei, “attributive form”) sumapu:”
- “: /sumapu/ → /sumaɸu/ → */sumawu/ → /sumau/ → /sumɔː/ → /sumoː/”
- Hedged“* May be an instance of ウ音(おん)便(びん) (u-onbin, “u sound shift”) from the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”), found in terms with bilabial consonants (/m/, /b/, /w/) followed by i:”
- “: ⟨sumapi₁⟩ → */sumapʲi/ → /sumaɸi/ → /sumawi/ → */sumawu/ → /sumau/ → /sumɔː/ → /sumoː/”
- “That said, the nominalization of terminal/attributive verb forms is quite rare in Japanese, whereas the “u” sound shift pattern is not uncommon.”
- Hedged“The historical kana spelling is given additionally as すまう (sumau) by some dictionaries, which should be used if the ウ音(おん)便(びん) (u-onbin) theory is accepted. Compare 向(む)こう (mukō), of similar derivation.”
- “The kanji spelling is either from the native sumai or Sino-Japanese sōboku readings below.”
Source: Wiktionary: 相撲 (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 相撲 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not すもう. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
すまい
- “⟨sumapi₁⟩ → */sumapʲi/ → /sumaɸi/ → /sumawi/ → /sumai/”
- “The 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of Old Japanese verb 争(すま)ふ (sumapu), modern 争(すま)う (sumau, “to contend, resist, compete (in sumo, for example)”), likely derived in turn from verb 済(す)む (sumu, “to settle, finish”, intransitive) as the 未(み)然(ぜん)形(けい) (mizenkei, “incomplete form”) suma + auxiliary verb ふ (-fu, indicating repetitive or ongoing action) → “on the verge of being settled” → “to be in competition”.”
- “The kanji spelling is an orthographic borrowing from Middle Chinese 相撲 (MC sjang phuwk, literally “mutually striking”).”
すもん
- “/sumɔː/ → /sumɔɴ/ → /sumoɴ/”
- “Edo-period shift from sumō above.”
そうぼく
- “/sauboku/ → /sɔːboku/ → /soːboku/”
- “From Middle Chinese 相撲 (MC sjang phuwk).”
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.
- Derivation
- A word built from a stem plus a suffix or prefix.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.