Word
仲良し
Meaning in Englishintimate friend, bosom buddy
Animated kanji stroke order
Sentence
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Word context
What it means
仲良し means close friends or people who are on good terms with each other. It describes a warm, harmonious social bond between individuals, such as classmates, colleagues, or family members, where trust and mutual friendliness are evident.
Main meanings
- Close friendship or a pair or group that gets along well.
- State or quality of being on good terms with someone.
- Used to describe social bonds among peers, not inherently romantic or familial.
How to use it
Used as a noun to denote a close relationship and can appear in both spoken and written Japanese. In casual speech it's common to describe schoolmates and friends as 仲良し, while in more formal contexts you may use alternatives like 仲がいい or 仲の良い関係 to adjust tone.
Variants and close terms
- 親しい友人関係 (shitashii yuujin kankei) — close friendship
- 親友関係 (shinyuu kankei) — best-friend relationship
- Antonym: 疎遠 (soen) — estranged relations
- Regional variation: no major dialectal variation; standard across Japan
Composition
- 仲 = relationship, being between people
- 良 = good
- し = nominalizing suffix turning the phrase into a noun indicating a state of being on good terms
Etymology
仲良し is formed from 仲 meaning relationship and 良 meaning good, with the nominalizing suffix し to express a state or quality.
Word class
noun (名詞)
Word
Related words by kanji and components
N1
仲人
nakoudo
go-between, matchmaker
N1
改良
kairyou
improvement, reform
N1
善良
zenryou
goodness, excellence, virtue
N1
不良
furyou
badness, delinquent, failure
N1
良し
yoshi
all right!
N1
良好
ryoukou
favorable, satisfactory
N1
良識
ryoushiki
good sense
N1
良質
ryoushitsu
good quality, superior quality
N1
良心
ryoushin
conscience
Kanji