買い物
Meaning in Englishshopping
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Related sentences
Word context
What it means
買い物 (kaimono) means shopping; it denotes the activity of purchasing goods or running errands to obtain items, covering everyday needs like groceries as well as larger planned purchases, and is widely used in spoken and written Japanese to refer to the event or process of buying.
Main meanings
- 1. The items acquired through shopping—the purchases themselves, distinct from the act.
- 2. A shopping trip or errand: a specific outing undertaken to buy supplies or goods.
- 3. Recreational shopping: buying as leisure or pastime rather than necessity.
- 4. A commerce or UI label indicating shopping functions or purchased items in stores and e-commerce contexts.
How to use it
Used across everyday speech, signage, receipts, and commerce contexts to refer to going to stores, doing errands, or the general act of buying; appropriate in casual conversation and neutral written contexts—from saying you need groceries to referencing online purchases or store categories.
Variants and close terms
- ショッピング (shoppingu): loanword from English meaning shopping (casual/modern).
- 買い出し (kaidashi): a shopping trip or errand, often for provisions.
- 購入 (kounyuu): purchase (more formal, emphasizes the transaction).
Composition
- 買 (kai): buy, to purchase.
- 物 (mono): thing, object, goods.
- The compound 買い物 (kaimono) combines those elements to convey 'buy-thing,' i.e., the act of acquiring things or the goods obtained by buying.
Origin
Buying and market exchange have existed in Japan since ancient times, with formalized urban marketplaces expanding in the Edo period; the modern consumer notion of shopping grew significantly during the Meiji and Taisho eras with department stores and later 20th-century retail developments, which shaped the contemporary social practice captured by the term.
Word class
noun (名詞); verbal noun / suru-verb (サ変名詞)