First opened Thursday, September 20, 2012
一切
いっさい
- 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).
without exception, the whole
Issai is from the Middle Chinese compound 一切, in the goon reading, which is probably the earlier import.
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
彼はいっさいを運に任せた。
He left everything to chance.
彼はアルコールを一切飲まない。
He never drinks alcohol.
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.
- “From Middle Chinese compound 一切 (MC 'jit tshejH). Compare modern Mandarin 一切 (yīqiè).”
- Hedged“The goon reading, so likely the earlier import.”
Source: Wiktionary: 一切 (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 一切 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not いっさい. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
いっせつ
- “From Middle Chinese compound 一切 (MC 'jit tshet). The kan'on reading, so likely the later import.”
- “Appears to be less common than the issai reading.”
ひときり
- “Compound of 一(ひと) (hito, “one”) + 切(き)り (kiri, “cut, cutting”, 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 切(き)る (kiru, “to cut”)).”
ひときれ
- “Compound of 一(ひと) (hito, “one”) + 切(き)れ (kire, “cut, cutting”, the 連(れん)用(よう)形(けい) (ren'yōkei, “stem or continuative form”) of the verb 切(き)れる (kireru, “to be cut apart, to be broken apart”)).”
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.
- Rendaku
- The first sound of the second part voices when two native words join (kami → -gami).
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.