First opened Saturday, September 26, 2009
武士
ぶし
- 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).
warrior, samurai
Bushi is Chinese “warrior-man” — a theory that it once meant “bowing down” runs into the Nara period.
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
武士は食わねど高楊枝。
A samurai, even when he has not eaten, uses a toothpick like a lord.
江戸時代、武士は刀を２本刺していた。
A samurai in the Edo era carried two swords.
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 Old Japanese, in turn from Middle Chinese 武士 (MC mjuX dzriX). Compare modern Min Nan pronunciation bú-sǐr. First cited to a portion of the 続日本紀 (Shoku Nihongi) dated to 721.”
- “Japanese philologist Shinobu Orikuchi postulated in the 1920s that bushi derived instead from 伏 (bushi), the rendaku (連濁) version of fushi, the 連用形 (ren'yōkei, stem or continuative form) of verb 伏す (fusu, “to bow down, to prostrate”), as found in terms such as 山伏 (yamabushi, “mountain hermit”) and 野伏 (nobushi, “hermit; brigand”). Orikuchi contended that this word arose some time during the Kamakura or Muromachi periods, and that the kanji spelling is ateji (当(あ)て字(じ)). However, the term 武士 (bushi) with the kanji spelling is attested already in the Nara period, many centuries earlier. In addition, rendaku only applies to the latter element in compounds, so nominalized verb fushi would not appear as bushi on its own.”
Source: Wiktionary: 武士 (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 武士 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not ぶし. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
もののふ
- “/mo₂no₂no₂pu/ → /mononopu/ → /mononofu/”
- “From Old Japanese. First cited to the Kojiki of 712.”
- “Regarded as a compound of 物 (mono, “thing”, likely in reference to weapons) + の (no, possessive or genitive particle) + ふ (fu, of uncertain meaning; likely related to the be in 物部 (mononobe)).”
- “The kanji are jukujikun (熟(じゅく)字(じ)訓(くん)).”
たけし・たけひと
- “Various nanori readings.”
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.
- Rendaku
- The first sound of the second part voices when two native words join (kami → -gami).
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.