白い

Pattern visualization

Examples

1. 雪は白いです。▶ —
   Snow is white.
2. 白い犬がかわいいです。▶ —
   The white dog is cute.

Collocations

Mnemonic

しろい — 白い, Yamato. An i-adjective. With 青 aoi and 赤 akai, 白 sits in Japan's ancient four-colour set. The kanji 白 pictures the sun's disk at first light — 'the brightness that has come'. Two idioms are worth pairing — 白い嘘 shiroi uso (a 'white lie'): a benign untruth. This one is a 20th-century calque from English 'white lie' ── not native classical Japanese. 白い目で見る shiroi me de miru ('to look with white eyes'): to look with cold disdain. This is a native idiom ── from the glare in which the whites of the eyes show. The Korean 'huinjawiro heulgida' rides on the same bodily image. Body-anchored metaphors travel stably across languages.

Quick check

1. What kind of gaze does 白い目で見る denote?

   • Cold, disdainful gaze
   • Clear, innocent gaze
   • Suspicious gaze
   • Sleepy gaze