First opened Monday, December 1, 2025
本能
ほんのう
- head-high (atamadaka): falls after mora 1
- 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).
instinct
Taken apart
We don't have the data for this section. Wiktionary has no Etymology section for this reading, and a split made without one would be a guess.
In a sentence
彼は闘争本能が強い。
He is possessed of a strong fighting instinct.
動物は本能のままに振る舞う。
Animals act on instinct.
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
We don't have the data for this section. The pinned Wiktionary dump has no Etymology section for this reading, so nothing is said about where the word comes from.
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.