First opened Sunday, July 10, 2011
元首
げんしゅ
- 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).
ruler, sovereign
Genshu is from the Middle Chinese compound 元首, literally “first, prime + head”.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.
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 compound 元首 (MC ngjwon syuwX, literally “first, prime + head”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 元首 (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 元首 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not げんしゅ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
もとくび
- “Compound of 元 (moto, “origin, base”) + 首 (kubi, “neck, head”).”
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.