いい
Meaning in Englishgood, nice, okay
Related sentences
Word context
What it means
いい directly denotes a basic positive adjective used to express approval, suitability, or acceptance in everyday Japanese; it functions as a quick, general-quality judgment about people, objects, actions, or situations and signals that something is acceptable or desirable.
Main meanings
- As an auxiliary after a verb's -te form (〜ていい): marks permission or that an action is allowed.
- With comparison constructions (〜ほうがいい): expresses a recommendation or that one option is preferable.
- Standalone interjection: used to praise or show delight about an object, event, or appearance.
- Attributive use before nouns to qualify them as suitable or desirable in context.
- Component in fixed expressions where its nuance changes (for example, compounds that convey moderation or irritation).
How to use it
Primarily a spoken, everyday adjective found in casual conversation, advertising, reviews, and service interactions; polite speech typically adds desu for formality, writing may prefer the alternate orthography or formal variant, and learners should note the adjective's irregular conjugation pattern in past and negative forms.
Variants and close terms
- 良い (yoi) — more formal/standard alternative to いい (used in polite or written contexts).
- ええ (ee) — regional/colloquial variant (common in Kansai speech) used as an affirmative or casual positive.
- 悪い (warui) — antonym meaning negative quality or unsatisfactory.
Etymology
いい is an irregular phonetic development of よい (yoi), which itself traces back to older forms like Old Japanese yoshi; historical sound changes and vowel coalescence regularized the doubled-vowel pronunciation in modern colloquial speech.
Origin
The descriptive concept appears in classical Japanese under related forms (e.g., yoshi) and by the Early Modern/Edo period the spoken doubled-vowel form had become common in everyday language; written use later stabilized with kana and kanji conventions reflecting both forms in different registers.
Word class
adjective (i-adjective / 形容詞), irregular