First opened Thursday, September 22, 2011
尿
にょう
- 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).
urine
Nyō, “urine”, is ultimately from Middle Chinese 尿 (MC newH) and is first attested in 1275.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: Wiktionary's text for it doesn't give a split that spells the word and joins to its reading, and any other split would be a guess.
Written with 尿
In a sentence
尿が少し赤いです。
My urine is a little red.
尿の色がピンクです。
My urine is pink.
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.
- “/neu/ → /njoː/”
- “Ultimately from Middle Chinese 尿 (MC newH, “urine”).”
- “First attested in 1275.”
Source: Wiktionary: 尿 (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 尿 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not にょう. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
ゆまり
- “Compound of 湯(ゆ) (yu, “warm water”) + 放(ま)り (mari, “excretion”, 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 放(ま)る (maru, “to excrete”)).”
- “First cited to the Nihon Shoki of 720 CE.”
ゆばり
- “/jumari/ → /jubari/”
- “From 尿(ゆまり) (yumari). Bilabial nasal /m/ loses nasality, becoming /b/. Likely due to lexicalization of the term, and a loss of awareness of the origins of the mari portion.”
- “First cited to the Wamyō Ruijushō of roughly 934 CE.”
いばり
- “/jumari/ → /jubari/ → */jʉbari/ → /ibari/”
- “Shift from 尿(ゆばり) (yubari).”
- “First attested in c. 950 CE.”
ばり
- “Shortening of 尿(ゆばり) (yubari) or 尿(いばり) (ibari).”
- “First attested in the early 1300s.”
しと
- “Unknown. Possibly onomatopoeia.”
- “First cited to the Utsubo Monogatari of roughly 999 CE.”
しし
- “From baby talk, as a reduplication of the initial shi- in 尿(しと) (shito).”
- “First cited to a text from the late Muromachi period (late 1500s).”
しい
- “/ɕito/ → /ɕi/ → /ɕiː/”
- “From baby talk. From 尿(しと) (shito), formed by dropping the second syllable and lengthening the vowel.”
- “/ɕiɕi/ → /ɕiːɕiː/ → /ɕiː/”
- “Alternatively, from 尿(しし) (shishi), formed by lengthening the vowel and dropping the second syllable.”
- “First attested in the late 1700s.”
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.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.