First opened Friday, January 22, 2010
缶
かん
- 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).
can, tin
A can is probably a Dutch kan in a borrowed kanji — but Chinese is the other candidate.
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 缶
In a sentence
缶は空っぽだ。
The can is empty.
道に缶をすてるな。
Don't throw away cans on the street.
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.
- Hedged“Likely from Dutch kan (“cylindrical metallic container”), with additional influence from English can (“cylindrical metallic container”). The kanji is an example of ateji (当(あ)て字(じ)). Alternatively, from Middle Chinese 罐 (kuɑnH, “can; jar; tin”). The usage of 缶 is likely due to a 新字体 (shinjitai) simplification from earlier 旧字体 (kyūjitai) 罐, where the phonetic component 雚 was entirely eliminated.”
Source: Wiktionary: 缶 (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).
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.
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.