無理
Meaning in Englishimpossible, unreasonable, forced
Animated kanji stroke order
Related sentences
Word context
What it means
What does 無理 mean? It means something is impossible or beyond one’s power. It denotes infeasibility, excessive demands, or impractical expectations, and is used to express that a task or request cannot reasonably be fulfilled in a given situation.
Main meanings
- Impossibility or lack of feasibility
- Unrealistic or impractical demands or goals
- Unreasonable or illogical expectations
- Overextension or pushing beyond available resources
How to use it
Used to describe situations that are beyond capacity or feasibility, often with だ/です for assertion; with する to indicate overdoing something; common in both casual and formal contexts; patterns include 無理だ, 無理です, 無理をする, 無理を言う.
Variants and close terms
- Impossibility or lack of feasibility — muri
- Unrealistic or impractical — higenjitsuteki
- Possible (antonym) — kanou
Composition
- 無 — nothing, not; 理 — reason, logic; together they express absence of logic or feasibility, giving the sense of no way to do something
Etymology
無 and 理 form a kanji compound whose readings combine to produce muri; the word is read with on'yomi for both characters in compounds, yielding muri in modern usage.
Origin
Classical Japanese usage predates modern textbooks, appearing in premodern literature to denote lack of feasibility.
Word class
na-adjective (形容動詞)