First opened Wednesday, October 14, 2026
一日
いちにち
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.
one day (duration)
Ichinichi is from Middle Chinese 一日, literally “one + day”, in what the page calls the goon reading.
Taken apart
Select a part to see every word so far that is taken apart with it.
In a sentence
よい一日をね。
Have a nice day.
長い一日が過ぎた。
A long day has passed on.
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 一日 (ʔiɪt̚ ȵiɪt̚, literally “one + day”). Compare modern Hakka reading yit-ngit.”
- Hedged“The goon reading, so likely the initial borrowing.”
Source: Wiktionary: 一日 (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 一日 on the same Wiktionary page
These describe other words written the same way, not いちにち. They are quoted for context: the parts, layer and processes of this word are not taken from them.
ついたち
- “/tuki tati/ → /t͡suitat͡ɕi/”
- “Originally a compound of 月 (tsuki, “moon; month”) + 立ち (tachi, “standing; starting, occurring”, the 連用形 (ren'yōkei, “continuative or stem form”) of verb 立つ (tatsu, “to stand up; to start, to occur”)).”
いちじつ
- “Ultimately from Middle Chinese 一日 (ʔiɪt̚ ȵiɪt̚, literally “one + day”). Compare modern Min Nan reading chi̍t-ji̍t.”
- “This reading uses the goon for the first character and the kan'on for the second character, suggesting a shift in reading after the initial borrowing.”
いっぴ
- “Compound of 一 (ichi, “one”, on'yomi, or Chinese-derived reading) + 日 (hi, “day”, kun'yomi, or native-Japanese reading).”
ひとひ
- “Compound of 一 (hito, “one”) + 日 (hi, “day”). Appears in The Tale of Genji of the early 1000s CE.”
ひとえ
- “/hitohi/ → /hitohe/ → /hitoe/”
- “Shift in pronunciation from hitohi above.”
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.
- Borrowing
- Taken over from another language.