First opened Monday, April 22, 2013
三味線
しゃみせん
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.
three-stringed Japanese guitar
Shamisen derives from the Okinawan 三線 (sanshin), and was originally called 蛇皮線 (jabisen, literally “snakeskin strings”).
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.
In a sentence
We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Tatoeba export has no sentence with a translation that uses this word and passes our filter.
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.
- “The instrument derives from the Okinawan 三線 (sanshin). Originally called 蛇皮線 (jabisen, literally “snakeskin strings”) in Japanese, so named for the way the Okinawan instrument's soundbox is traditionally covered in snakeskin. The traditional jabisen instrument was imported into the Sakai area of Osaka during the Eiroku era (1558–1570), then later modified by biwa luthiers to have the square-shaped shamisen soundbox of today.”
- “The reading jabisen shifted over time to 蛇味線 (jamisen), replacing the 皮 (bi, “skin, leather”) character with 味 (mi) for phonetic reasons, i.e. as ateji (当(あ)て字(じ)). Then jamisen changed to shamisen, replacing the 蛇 (ja, “snake”) character with 三 (sha , usually read san, “three”) for semantic reasons. The sha reading for the 三 character is irregular.”
- “The shamisen reading is first cited to a text from 1580.”
Source: Wiktionary: 三味線 (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 三味線 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not しゃみせん. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
さみせん
- “Sound shift from shamisen above, possibly influenced by the standard san reading of the initial 三 character.”
- “This reading appears to be less common than shamisen.”
- “First cited to a text from 1632.”
What the labels mean
- Ateji
- Kanji chosen for their sound or sense after the word existed.