First opened Wednesday, March 10, 2010
都合
つごう
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
circumstances, convenience
From “adding it all up” to “is that convenient for you?”
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
Wiktionary's text doesn't split this word, so each part is one of its kanji (with the okurigana written after it), with the reading and the dictionary meaning KANJIDIC2 gives that character — a word doesn't always use every sense of its kanji.
In a sentence
一身上の都合です。
For personal reasons.
何とか都合して来てください。
Will you try to come?
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 Middle Chinese 都合 (MC tu kòp, “to sum up; altogether”). First attested in Japan in the 正倉院文書 (Shōsōin Monjo) of 734 CE in the literal sense of “totaling” or “summing up.””
- “Over time, the meaning shifted from the “total sum of things” to the “general state of affairs” (circumstances) in the Middle Japanese period, eventually leading to the modern sense of “convenience.””
Source: Wiktionary: 都合 (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.
- Compound
- Two or more words or stems joined into one.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.
- Meaning shift
- The word's meaning moved away from where it started.