First opened Monday, December 26, 2011
分子
ぶんし
- 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).
numerator, molecule
Bunshi is from Middle Chinese 分子 (pjun tsiX).
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
熱力学の背後には、第１巻で学んだ力学の法則にしたがう原子や分子の運動があります。
Behind thermodynamics lie the movements of atoms and molecules following the laws of motion learned in the first volume.
分子Ｄの運動の観察に基づき、可能な出口が３つ存在するようシステムに変更を加える。
Based on my observation of the movement of particle D, I modify the system so that three possible exits exist.
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 分子 (pjun tsiX).”
Source: Wiktionary: 分子 (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.