地下鉄

Taken apart

1. 地

   ち

   ground

2. +

3. 下

   か

   below

4. +

5. 鉄

   てつ

   iron

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.

Written with 地下鉄

In a sentence

• 地下鉄(ちかてつ)に乗(の)ろう。

  Let's take the subway.

  Tatoeba #127015, translation #277075

• 地下鉄(ちかてつ)は地面(じめん)の下(した)を走(はし)る。

  Subways run under the ground.

  Tatoeba #127004, translation #277086

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.

• “Clipping of 地(ち)下(か)鉄(てつ)道(どう) (chika tetsudō, “underground railway”), itself 地下(ちか) (chika, “underground”) + 鉄道(てつどう) (tetsudō, “railway”).”

Source: Wiktionary: 地下鉄 (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.

Clipping

A longer word or phrase shortened in everyday use.