First opened Tuesday, June 16, 2009
気配
けはい
- head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1
- middle-high (nakadaka): falls after mora 2
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).
indication, sign, hint
A hint or sign is a “mood crawling around” — spelled with a 配 that was only fitted to the sound.
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
私が出発する前に夕食が出るけはいはなかった。
There was no sign of dinner appearing before I left.
何事かが今にも起こりそうなけはいを感じていた。
He felt that something was about to happen.
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 earlier けはひ (kefafi), a compound of 気(け) (ke, “atmosphere, spirit; feeling, mood”) + 這(は)ひ (fafi, “creeping, crawling; spreading”, modern 這(は)い (hai); the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 這(は)ふ (fafu, “to crawl, to creep; to spread along the ground, to spread around”, modern 這(は)う (hau))).”
- “The kanji 配 (“distribution”) was applied to the hai portion of the reading as an example of ateji (当(あ)て字(じ)).”
Source: Wiktionary: 気配 (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 気配 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not けはい. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
きはい
- “Senses other than “thoughtfulness, consideration” are likely a shift from 気(け)配(はい) (kehai) above, using the kan'on reading of ki for 気.”
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.
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.