Mimetic four letter words with っ

08 Feb 2025 - sibaku

About

There are a lot of different onomatopoeic or mimetic words in Japanese, so words that mimic the sound or the feeling of something. One subcategory of those gives me lots of trouble: 4 letter words with a small つ at the second position. I did expect to find more, but there are still quite a few of them.

As you can see in the letter distributions, nearly all of them also end in り. The third letter doesn’t have a lot of variance either, with 6 characters being in about half of the words.

This results in many of these words being very similar, making it, in my experience, hard to learn and differentiate them.

I believe, that most of these words are 擬態語, though I have neither checked every single one, nor am I confident that I understand the different onomatopea/mimetic classes well enough (for example, I believe something like ドッキリ is a 擬情語?). This isn’t super important to me though, but it would be nice to know! The dictionary just classifies them all as onomatopoeic or mimetic words.

Words in the list are sorted according to one frequency measure, with the more frequent ones coming first.

If you just want to see the list of words without meaning, have a look here: List

Limitiations

There is very limited processing during the generation and as such there are some limitations to keep in mind.

First of all, this list was created by a non-linguist Japanese learner based on things I found interesting or difficult during learning and might contain inaccuracies due to ignorance.

Similarly, while the entries are sorted by the frequency (according to the nfxx field) of the associated entry. This is neither the only nor the most sophisticted order. This only influences the list order though, so this shouldn’t cause any issues.

Only words tagged as “onomatopoeic or mimetic word” were considered, as otherwise words like 学校 would also fit the criterion. This might lead to missing words, but the number of untagged words is probably low.

Word list

Total number of entries considered: 208954

Total number of onomatopoeic or mimetic words: 1217

Total number of entries: 124

Distribution of letters at position 1:

9 8 8 7 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Distribution of letters at position 3:

23 13 12 9 8 8 7 6 6 6 5 4 4 4 2 2 2 1 1 1

Distribution of letters at position 4:

104 7 5 2 2 1 1 1 1

1. あっさり

2. うっかり

3. かっちり

4. がっかり

5. がっくり

6. がっしり

7. がっちり

8. がっぷり

9. きっかり

10. きっちり

11. きっぱり

12. ぎっしり

13. くっきり

14. ぐっすり

15. ぐったり

16. げっそり

17. こっそり

18. ごっちゃ

19. さっさと

20. さっぱり

21. しっくり

22. じっくり

23. すっかり

24. すっきり

25. すっぱり

26. ずっしり

27. そっくり

28. たっぷり

29. ドッキリ

30. はっきり

31. バッチリ

32. ぱっくり

33. ぱっちり

34. ひっそり

35. びっしり

36. ぴったり

37. べったり

38. ぼっとん

39. ぽっきり

40. ぽってり

41. むっつり

42. もっこり

43. ゆっくり

44. びっくり

45. しっかり

46. うっとり

47. すっくと

48. どっしり

49. にっこり

50. ばったり

51. ぺったり

52. こっくり

53. こってり

54. せっせと

55. とっぷり

56. どっかと

57. どっさり

58. ほっそり

59. ぽっかり

60. ぽっつり

61. ゆったり

62. みっちり

63. おっとり

64. むっちり

65. まったり

66. どっぷり

67. ぽっくり

68. ごっそり

69. かっきり

70. どっかり

71. ふっくら

72. ほっこり

73. すっぽり

74. ガッポリ

75. がっつり

76. しっとり

77. のっぺり

78. しっぽり

79. ざっくり

80. ごっくん

81. ごっくり

82. ねっとり

83. ブッブー

84. がっしと

85. じっとり

86. プッツン

87. むっくり

88. ぺったん

89. ばっさり

90. ぼったり

91. でっぷり

92. さっくり

93. すっすっ

94. のっそり

95. ぴっちり

96. ぽっちり

97. もっそり

98. もっさり

99. ぷっつり

100. こっきり

101. ふっくり

102. どっぴゅ

103. ぱったり

104. むっくと

105. ペッペッ

106. どっくん

107. ウッキー

108. うっそり

109. ぷっくり

110. とっくり

111. バッチシ

112. みっしり

113. じっぱり

114. ぽっぽと

115. すっくり

116. ほっかり

117. ぽっこり

118. ずっぷり

119. がったり

120. ぎっくり

121. ぶっつり

122. もったり

123. ビッタリ

124. ねっちり