First opened Tuesday, May 19, 2009
上手
じょうず
- tail-high (odaka): falls after mora 3
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).
be good at, skillful
“Skilful” is, in Chinese, “top hand” — and this reading mixes two layers of Chinese sounds.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
Wiktionary's text doesn't split this word, so each part is one of its kanji (with the okurigana written after it), with the reading and the dictionary meaning KANJIDIC2 gives that character — a word doesn't always use every sense of its kanji.
In a sentence
料理が上手ですね。
You are a good cook.
彼女は字が上手だ。
She has good handwriting.
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “/d͡ʑauzu/ → /d͡ʑɔːzu/ → /d͡ʑoːzu/”
- “From Middle Chinese compound 上手 (dzyangᴴ syuw^X, “to have the upper hand → to gain mastery, to master something”, literally “top hand”).”
- Hedged“This reading is likely a later innovation in Japanese after the initial borrowing. This uses the goon of jō for the first character, and the kan'yōon of zu for the second character.”
Source: Wiktionary: 上手 (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 上手 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not じょうず. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
じょうしゅ
- “/d͡ʑauɕu/ → /d͡ʑɔːɕu/ → /d͡ʑoːɕu/”
- “From Middle Chinese compound 上手 (dzyangᴴ syuw^X, “to have the upper hand → to gain mastery, to master something”, literally “top hand”).”
- “This is the goon reading for both characters, so likely the reading as initially borrowed.”
じょうて
- “/d͡ʑaute/ → /d͡ʑɔːte/ → /d͡ʑoːte/”
- “Variation on jōzu above, replacing the kan'yōon of zu with the kun'yomi of te.”
うわて
- “Compound of 上 (uwa, “up, upper”) + 手 (te, “hand”).”
かみて
- “Compound of 上 (kami, “up, upper”) + 手 (te, “hand”).”
こうて
- “/kamite/ → /kaũte/ → /kaute/ → /kɔːte/ → /koːte/”
- “Shift from 上(かみ)手(て) (kamite).”
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.