Word.ws English Dictionary

otsu

otsu adjective: in Old Japanese, one of two sets of vowels of uncertain pronunciation which fell together in modern Japanese.

Adjective

otsu (not comparable)

  1. In Old Japanese, one of two sets of vowels of uncertain pronunciation which fell together in modern Japanese.
    • Later—during the ninth century—the kō and otsu groups did come to be used interchangeably.1991, Christopher Seeley, A History of Writing in Japan
    • He rejects the claim of Matsumoto (1984) that the kô and otsu -o- vowels are in complementary distribution, and therefore these two vowels are allophones of a single vowel.2001, John R. Bentley, A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose

Proper noun capitalized: Otsu

Otsu

  1. The capital city of Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

Forms of otsu

alternative formŌtsu

Origin of otsu

Borrowed from Japanese 乙 (“second”).

Borrowed from Japanese 大津 (Ōtsu).

Questions about otsu

What does otsu mean?
Otsu means in Old Japanese, one of two sets of vowels of uncertain pronunciation which fell together in modern Japanese.
What part of speech is otsu?
Otsu can be an adjective or a proper noun.

Words near otsu in the dictionary

  1. Otsego bass
  2. Otsego County
  3. Otsego Lake
  4. OTSOG
  5. Otsosaht
  6. otsu
  7. Otsuka
  8. Otsukas
  9. Otsukimi
  10. ott
  11. otta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: otsu (page history and authors); Otsu (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “otsu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/otsu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.