First opened Tuesday, January 3, 2012
義理
ぎり
- tail-high (odaka): falls after mora 2
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).
debt of gratitude, obligation
Giri is from Middle Chinese 義理, which first meant “righteous principle” and narrowed in Japan during the Muromachi and Edo periods.
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
私は彼に義理を立てなければならない。
I have to do right by him.
日本語の「義理」に相当する英語は見つからない。
We cannot find an English equivalent for the Japanese 'giri'.
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 義理 (MC ngjeH liX).”
- “Originally, in Middle Chinese and early Japanese attestations, the term carried a philosophical and textual meaning of “righteous principle”, “reason”, or “significance”. During the Muromachi and Edo periods, under the influence of a stratified feudal society, samurai ethics, and the merchant class, the concept underwent semantic narrowing in Japan. The “correct path” shifted to refer specifically to the reciprocal behavioral norms, social debts, and favors expected between individuals in a hierarchical community. This transformed the philosophical concept into a localized social contract and “burden of obligation”, famously contrasting with 人情 (ninjō, “human feeling”). This specialized sense developed entirely internally within Japan.”
Source: Wiktionary: 義理 (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.