First opened Tuesday, January 12, 2010
科学
かがく
- 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).
science
“Science” was coined in Japan from Chinese parts — and it collided with “chemistry”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
彼は科学に熱心だ。
He is keen on science.
心理学は心の科学です。
Psychology is the science of the mind.
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.
- “/kʷaɡaku/ → /kaɡaku/”
- “First attested in the mid-Meiji period as a translation of English science.”
- “Coined in Japan of Middle Chinese-derived elements 科(か) (ka, “field, imperial examination, compounding the radical 斗 (“measuring tool”)”) + 学(がく) (-gaku, “school, study”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 科学 (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 科学 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not かがく. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
しながく
- “As 科(か)学(がく) (kagaku) above has become homophonous with 化(か)学(がく) (kagaku, “chemistry”), 科学 is sometimes read as 科(しな)学(がく) (shinagaku) to differentiate. However, reading 化学 as 化(ばけ)学(がく) (bakegaku) is more common.”
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.
- Made in Japan
- Coined in Japan from foreign material (wasei-kango, wasei-eigo), not borrowed whole.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.