First opened Friday, January 11, 2013
貧弱
ひんじゃく
- 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).
poor, meager, insubstantial
Hinjaku is probably from the Middle Chinese compound 貧弱, literally “poor + weak”, or may have been coined in Japan from 貧 (hin, “poor”) plus 弱 (jaku, “weak”).
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
彼の美術の知識は貧弱だ。
His knowledge of art is poor.
私の物理の知識は貧弱です。
I don't have much knowledge of physics.
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“Probably from Middle Chinese compound 貧弱 (MC bin nyak, literally “poor + weak”). Compare modern Mandarin 貧弱／贫弱 (pínruò, “poor and weak”).”
- Hedged“Alternatively, may have been coined in Japan of Middle Chinese-derived elements 貧 (hin, “poor”) + 弱 (jaku, “weak”).”
Source: Wiktionary: 貧弱 (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.
- Made in Japan
- Coined in Japan from foreign material (wasei-kango, wasei-eigo), not borrowed whole.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.