First opened Sunday, February 7, 2010
蕎麦
そば
- 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).
soba (buckwheat noodles)
Buckwheat noodles carry a word whose root may be a “corner” — or a “feather”.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: the only split Wiktionary offers is hedged (see the marked line below), and it doesn't spell the word — it describes where the sound may come from — so showing it as the word's parts would be a guess.
In a sentence
すぐそこでそばを立ち食いしてきた。
I had a bowl of noodles at a street nearby.
長野にいる友人を訪問した際、おいしいそばをごちそうになった。
When I visited my friend in Nagano, I was treated to delicious soba.
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.
- “Not attested until the middle of the Muromachi period (1336–1573), as a shortening of older 蕎麦 (soba mugi, literally “soba grain”).”
- Hedged“Two theories exist regarding the ultimate derivation of the soba element:”
- Hedged“* Samuel Martin reconstructs soba as Proto-Japonic *sonpa and derives it as a compound of *so (unknown) + *pa (“feather”). The *pa changes to *ⁿba as an instance of rendaku (連濁).”
- “* From 稜 (soba, “an edge, a corner”), in reference to the seed of the plant being a triangular oval shape with protruding corners.”
- “Considering the late appearance of soba in isolation with the meaning of buckwheat, and the attested earlier senses of side; corner, edge, Martin's reconstruction seems unlikely.”
- “The kanji spelling is an example of jukujikun (熟(じゅく)字(じ)訓(くん)), from 蕎 (“buckwheat”) + 麦 (“wheat”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 蕎麦 (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 蕎麦 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not そば. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
そばむぎ
- “From Old Japanese. First attested as the ideographic spelling 蕎麦 in a section of the Shoku Nihongi dated to 722. Later attested in the 本草和名 (Honzō Wamyō, “Main Plants Japanese Names”, a Japanese reference of plants used in Chinese medicine, compiled in 918) with the phonetic spelling 曾波牟岐 (so pa mu gi).”
- “Analyzable as a compound of 蕎 (soba, “buckwheat”) + 麦 (mugi, “dry-field grain”). However, the soba portion is not attested in isolation to mean "buckwheat" until the middle of the Muromachi period (1336–1573). It appears that soba was originally the word 稜 (soba, “corner, angle”) in reference to the angular shape of the buckwheat grain. Compare the similar derivation of English buckwheat, where the buck element is cognate with beech and refers to the angular shape of the beechnut. An old Japanese name for the beech tree is in fact 柧棱木 (soba no ki), again in reference to the angular shape of the beechnut.”
そまむぎ
- “/sobamuɡi/ → /somamuɡi/”
- “Shift in pronunciation from sobamugi. First attested in the early 1100s.”
きょうばく
- “Possibly a borrowing from Middle Chinese 蕎麥 (MC kjew|gjew meak). First attested in a section of the Shoku Nihongi dated to 722, and additionally later in imported works written in Chinese by Bai Juyi (772–846).”
- “Unclear if this reading was ever prevalent; use might have been limited to kanbun contexts. Not listed in many Japanese dictionaries.”
What the labels mean
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Derivation
- A word built from a stem plus a suffix or prefix.
- Rendaku
- The first sound of the second part voices when two native words join (kami → -gami).
- Clipping
- A longer word or phrase shortened in everyday use.
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.
- Origin unclear
- Scholars disagree, or nobody knows.