First opened Wednesday, May 2, 2012
演じる
えんじる
Pitch accent: We don't have the data for this section. No accent list gives this spelling and reading, or the two we check against disagree.
to perform, to play (a part), to act
Enjiru is a shift from the verb 演ずる (enzuru), as -uru verbs moved to the -iru pattern.
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 演
In a sentence
彼は舞台で演じた。
He acted on the stage.
重要な役を演じる。
I play an important part.
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.
- “Shift from verb 演(えん)ずる (enzuru), by natural progression from サ行変格活用 (sa-gyō henkaku katsuyō, “s-irregular conjugation”) verbs ending in -uru to 上一段活用 (kami ichidan katsuyō, “upper monograde conjugation”) verbs ending in -iru.”
Source: Wiktionary: 演じる (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.
- Sound change
- The pronunciation shifted over the centuries.