The 42 most common Japanese adjectives
These are the 42 adjectives among the 500 most common Japanese words, in the order a corpus of everyday writing says you will meet them.
Meanings are given in English on this page. In the app they appear in your own language, translated on your device.
| # | Word | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | ない | Adjectives | not; there is no |
| 28 | いい | Adjectives | good |
| 78 | 良い | Adjectives | good |
| 96 | みたい | Adjectives | appended after the noun to mean -like, resembling |
| 100 | 好き | Adjectives | liked, likable |
| 109 | 必要 | Adjectives | needed, necessary |
| 112 | そんな | Adjectives | like that; that kind of |
| 123 | 本当 | Adjectives | true, proper, real |
| 131 | こんな | Adjectives | like this; this kind of |
| 150 | 悪い | Adjectives | bad, wicked, evil |
| 155 | 多い | Adjectives | there are many, there is much, there are numerous |
| 158 | 可能 | Adjectives | possible |
| 175 | 様 | Adjectives | be like, look like, seem like, as if |
| 179 | 高い | Adjectives | high, tall |
| 188 | 一緒 | Adjectives | combined, merged, unified |
| 203 | 可愛い | Adjectives | embarrassed |
| 204 | 安い | Adjectives | inexpensive |
| 227 | 早い | Adjectives | early |
| 252 | 強い | Adjectives | strong, durable, powerful |
| 256 | 大丈夫 | Adjectives | all right; okay; in good health; uninjured |
| 284 | 無理 | Adjectives | cannot, impossible, incapable |
| 296 | 普通 | Adjectives | common, ordinary |
| 299 | ほしい | Adjectives | 欲しい: wanted, desired, needed |
| 305 | 最高 | Adjectives | highest; greatest |
| 309 | 簡単 | Adjectives | easy |
| 311 | 大きい | Adjectives | big |
| 312 | 楽 | Adjectives | comfortable, enjoying |
| 315 | 新しい | Adjectives | new, novel |
| 349 | どんな | Adjectives | how?; like what?; what kind of...? |
| 355 | 初 | Adjectives | innocent |
| 385 | 面白い | Adjectives | interesting; amusing |
| 397 | 一般 | Adjectives | general, common, ordinary |
| 410 | 嬉しい | Adjectives | happy, glad |
| 413 | マジ | Adjectives | serious, for real |
| 432 | 重要 | Adjectives | important, significant |
| 434 | 怖い | Adjectives | frightening, scary, terrifying |
| 436 | 楽しい | Adjectives | pleasant, delightful, fun, enjoyable |
| 456 | ねぇ | Adjectives | alternative form of ない (nai, “no”) |
| 457 | まい | Adjectives | no good |
| 464 | 正しい | Adjectives | true, straight, unwarped, unskewed, proper |
| 465 | 長い | Adjectives | long |
| 490 | 安全 | Adjectives | safe; secure |
All 500 A1 words are on this page, free, with no sign-up.
The rest of the list
- A2A2 Beginner: 500 more words大事 · はい · エロ · シリーズ · ライブ
- B1B1 Intermediate: 750 more words読む · 賞 · 通信 · 都 · 頂く
- B2B2 Upper intermediate: 750 more words書籍 · 株 · 次元 · 無視 · 章
A2 to B2 are part of Oqou Pro, in the app, where you can also send any word straight into spaced review and meet it again on the day you are about to forget it.
Where this comes from
The order is measured: it comes from how often each word appears in a large corpus, counted across all the forms of a word rather than each form separately, so a verb is ranked where you really meet it. The band edges are a convention rather than a measurement. Nothing says word 501 is harder than word 500; the levels are cut where established graded reader series cut theirs.
wordfreq 3.1 (frequency order) + en.wiktionary via kaikki.org (part of speech, gender, gloss). Corpus read on 2026-09-16.
Questions
Where does the order come from?
From how often each word appears in a large corpus of everyday writing. Frequency is counted across all the forms of a word and attributed to the dictionary form, so a verb is ranked where a reader really meets it rather than being spread thinly over a dozen endings.
Why are these lists shorter than the ones with 5,000 or 10,000 words?
Because past about 2,500 a frequency rank stops meaning much. Rank 6,000 in a web corpus is not a harder word, it is a word that happens to be common in journalism. Established graded reader series top out near 2,500 headwords for the same reason.
Is every word in the list a real dictionary word?
Yes. Every headword is checked against the language's own Wiktionary entry, which is where the part of speech, the gender and the meaning come from. That check is what removes the proper nouns, single letters and corpus noise that raw frequency lists are full of.
Do I need the app?
Not for this page. The A1 list is free here and free in the app. A2 to B2 are part of Oqou Pro, and the app is also where a word can go from a list into a review queue, which is the part a page cannot do.
Has a native speaker checked these?
Not yet. The frequency order and the part of speech are mechanical, and the meanings come from a dictionary rather than being written by hand, but nothing here has been through native review. If you spot a meaning that is technically right and practically useless, we would like to hear about it.