First opened Tuesday, August 2, 2011
文書
ぶんしょ
- 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).
document, writing
Bunsho is from the Middle Chinese compound 文書, in the kan'on reading, now the most common one.
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
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- “From Middle Chinese compound 文書 (*miən *shiu). Compare modern Chinese 文書 /文书 (wénshū).”
- Hedged“The kan'on reading, so likely a later borrowing. Now the most common reading for this term.”
Source: Wiktionary: 文書 (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 文書 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not ぶんしょ. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
もんじょ
- “From Middle Chinese compound 文書 (*miən *shiu), with rendaku for the 書 character. The sho changes to jo as an instance of rendaku (連濁). Compare modern Chinese 文書 /文书 (wénshū).”
- “The goon reading, so likely the initial borrowing. Less common reading in modern Japanese.”
もんぞ
- “Archaic alteration of monjo above.”
ふみがき
- “Compound of 文 (fumi, “writing; a letter, an epistle”) + 書 (kaki, “writing”, the 連用形 (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of verb 書く kaku, “to write”). The kaki changes to gaki as an instance of rendaku (連濁).”
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.