First opened Tuesday, March 11, 2008
税
ぜい
- head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1
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).
tax
Zei, “tax”, is from Middle Chinese 稅, first cited in Japanese to a portion of the Shoku Nihongi dated to 719.
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.
Written with 税
In a sentence
王は国民に重い税を課した。
The king imposed heavy taxes on his people.
その税法案は昨日可決された。
The tax bill was passed yesterday.
Sentences are from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), picked by fixed rules from a dated export and shown unchanged. Nobody has reviewed them one by one.
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 Middle Chinese 稅 (MC sywejH). First cited in Japanese to a portion of the Shoku Nihongi dated to 719.”
Source: Wiktionary: 税 (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 税 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not ぜい. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
ちから
- “Shift in sense from 力 (chikara, “strength”), implying "that which is produced from strength".”
- “First cited in the 延喜式 (Engishiki) of 927.”
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.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.