First opened Saturday, December 31, 2011
余程
よほど
- flat (heiban)
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).
very, much, to a large extent, quite
Yohodo is likely a back-formation from 余っ程 (yoppodo), ultimately from よき (yoki, “good”) plus ほど (hodo, “extent”), with 余 an ateji.
Taken apart
No breakdown is shown for this word: the only split Wiktionary offers is hedged (see the marked line below), and it doesn't spell the word — it describes where the sound may come from — so showing it as the word's parts would be a guess.
In a sentence
彼はその話がよほど面白かったようだ。
It seems that he was very much amused by the story.
よほど重要な用向きでやってきたことが、彼の顔色で分かった。
I could tell by the look on his face that he had come on very important business.
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.
Not settled
Wiktionary itself hedges on part of this word's origin — those lines are marked below.
- Hedged“This form is likely a back-formation from from 余(よ)っ程(ぽど) (yoppodo), interpreting the geminated consonant as an intensifier. Ultimately from よき (yoki, “good”) + ほど (hodo, “extent”). The use of the character 余 is an example of ateji (当(あ)て字(じ)).”
Source: Wiktionary: 余程 (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
- 混種語 Hybrid
- Words that mix layers, e.g. a native part with a Chinese one.
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.