〜うございます: Archaic-Polite Adjectives | Japanese Grammar

Every learner says ありがとうございます on their first day, and almost none of them realise it is an adjective plus ございます. The greeting is not an unanalysable lump — it is 有り難い ("hard to come by, precious") run through a sound change and bolted to the polite existence verb ございます. The same machinery builds おはようございます and おめでとうございます. This pattern — an i-adjective joined to ございます via the ウ音便 (u-euphonic change) — was once the ordinary way to make an adjective ultra-polite. Modern speech replaced it with the flat 高いです, but the old form survives in two places: the frozen daily greetings you already know, and the deferential register of traditional service and Kansai speech.

The mechanism: 連用形 + ウ音便 + ございます

To attach an i-adjective to ございます, you start from its 連用形 (adverbial form) — the 〜く ending — and then soften the く by the ウ音便: the く drops, leaving a vowel + う, and the two fuse. The fusion is regular, and it depends entirely on the vowel that sat in front of く.

Vowel before く	Fusion	連用形 →	ございます
a (〜あく)	au → ō	高く takaku → 高う takō	高うございます
i (〜いく)	iu → yū (palatalises)	大きく ōkiku → 大きゅう ōkyū	大きゅうございます
u (〜うく)	uu → ū	寒く samuku → 寒う samū	寒うございます
o (〜おく)	ou → ō	面白く omoshiroku → 面白う omoshirō	面白うございます

Read the mechanism on one word. 高い ("high, expensive"): its adverbial form is 高く takaku. Drop the k and you get takau; the sequence au fuses to a long ō, giving 高う takō. Add ございます and you have 高うございます takō gozaimasu — the deferential way to say "it is expensive."

この反物は少々お高うございます。

kono tanmono wa shōshō otakō gozaimasu

This cloth is a little on the expensive side. (deferential / traditional retail)

今日は一段と寒うございますね。

kyō wa ichidan to samū gozaimasu ne

It's especially cold today, isn't it. (formal / older register)

💡

The recipe is one step: take the 〜く adverbial form, drop the く, and fuse the leftover vowel with う — あく→おう, おく→おう, うく→ū, and いく→ゅう (the one that palatalises the preceding consonant). The four-row table above is the whole rule; everything else follows from it.

The palatalising cases: しく → しゅう, きく → きゅう

The i-row deserves a second look, because iu does not simply become a plain vowel — it drags the preceding consonant into a palatal y-glide. So the mora before く changes shape:

Adjective	連用形	ウ音便	ございます
大きい (big)	大きく ōkiku	大きゅう ōkyū	大きゅうございます
うれしい (glad)	うれしく ureshiku	うれしゅう ureshū	うれしゅうございます
よろしい (fine, good)	よろしく yoroshiku	よろしゅう yoroshū	よろしゅうございます
おいしい (tasty)	おいしく oishiku	おいしゅう oishū	おいしゅうございます

きく becomes きゅう (kiu → kyū) and しく becomes しゅう (shiu → shū). These are the forms you hear in high-end restaurants, ryokan, and the mouths of older, refined speakers — and よろしゅうございます in particular is a hallmark of polished Kyoto-Osaka speech.

お味はいかがでございますか。ええ、大変おいしゅうございました。

oaji wa ikaga de gozaimasu ka. ee, taihen oishū gozaimashita

How is the taste? — Oh, it was truly delicious. (formal dining)

それでよろしゅうございますか。

sore de yoroshū gozaimasu ka

Will that be all right? (deferential / Kansai)

The living fossils: ありがとう, おはよう, おめでとう

Now the payoff. The three greetings every learner already owns are this exact pattern, frozen. Run each back through the rule and it decomposes cleanly:

Greeting	Adjective root	連用形	ウ音便
ありがとう	有り難い (rare, hard to receive)	有り難く arigataku	ありがとう arigatō (au → ō)
おはよう	早い (early)	お早く ohayaku	おはよう ohayō (au → ō)
おめでとう	めでたい (auspicious)	めでたく medetaku	おめでとう omedetō (au → ō)

有り難い literally means "difficult to have" — precious, rare — so ありがとうございます is, at root, "what you have done for me is a rare and precious thing." おはようございます is "it is early." おめでとうございます is "it is auspicious." Each is an a-row adjective (難く, 早く, めでたく) whose au fused to ō, exactly like 高く → 高う. Once you see it, おめでとう stops being a mysterious blob and becomes めでたく with its ending softened.

いつも本当にありがとうございます。

itsumo hontō ni arigatō gozaimasu

Thank you so much, as always.

ご結婚、おめでとうございます。

gokekkon, omedetō gozaimasu

Congratulations on your marriage.

部長、おはようございます。

buchō, ohayō gozaimasu

Good morning, boss.

The past-tense ありがとうございました works the same way — ございます simply takes its polite past ございました, which is why you thank someone for a completed favour with the past form.

先日は色々とありがとうございました。

senjitsu wa iroiro to arigatō gozaimashita

Thank you for everything the other day.

💡

ありがとう, おはよう, おめでとう are not vocabulary items to memorise blind — they are 有り難く, 早く, めでたく with their 〜く softened to 〜う. The greeting you already say is a live specimen of a once-productive grammar.

Register: mostly retired, selectively alive

For a plain description, modern standard Japanese abandoned this pattern in favour of the flat i-adjective + です: you say 高いです, not 高うございます, to tell a friend something is expensive. The ウ音便 + ございます form is now marked as (formal), (literary), or (regional: Kansai) — the language of traditional inns, upscale shops, ceremonial speech, and older or Kyoto-Osaka speakers. Producing 大きゅうございます in casual conversation would sound as antique as saying "'tis a most grievous cold" in English. The exceptions are the three greetings (and 申し訳ございません, though that is the negative of an adjective-like 申し訳ない), which stay fully alive and register-neutral.

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Recognise 〜うございます everywhere; produce it only in genuinely formal or traditional-service contexts. For ordinary polite speech, 高いです — not 高うございます — is correct modern Japanese.

Common mistakes

Mistake 1 — Not parsing the greetings, then mis-segmenting them. Treating おめでとう as an atom leads to wrong stress and wrong written forms.

❌ おめでとおございます

Misheard — the ending is とう (from めでたく → めでとう), spelled おめでとう, not おめでとお.

✅ おめでとうございます

omedetō gozaimasu

Congratulations.

Mistake 2 — Building the flat modern form incorrectly by force-fitting ございます. Learners try to make 高い polite as ×高いございます.

❌ この時計は高いございます。

Wrong join — an i-adjective can't sit directly on ございます. Either use the modern 高いです or the ウ音便 form 高うございます.

✅ この時計は高うございます。

kono tokei wa takō gozaimasu

This watch is expensive. (deferential)

Mistake 3 — Using the plain 〜く form before ございます. The whole point is that く does NOT survive; ×ありがたくございます skips the sound change.

❌ ありがたくございます。

Unchanged く — the ウ音便 is obligatory here: 有り難く → ありがとう. It must be ありがとうございます.

✅ ありがとうございます。

arigatō gozaimasu

Thank you.

Mistake 4 — Overusing the archaic form in casual speech. Deploying 寒うございます with friends.

❌ 今日めっちゃ寒うございますね。（友達に）

✅ 今日めっちゃ寒いね。

kyō meccha samui ne

It's freezing today, huh.

Key takeaways

〜うございます is an i-adjective + ございます, joined through the ウ音便: take the 〜く adverbial form, drop く, and fuse the leftover vowel with う.
The fusion is regular by vowel: au → ō, iu → yū (palatalising: きく→きゅう, しく→しゅう), uu → ū, ou → ō.
ありがとう, おはよう, おめでとう are frozen specimens of this rule — 有り難く, 早く, めでたく with their endings softened.
Modern standard speech uses flat 高いです instead; the 〜うございます form is now formal / traditional / Kansai register — recognise it everywhere, produce it only there.
The three greetings (and their past forms like ありがとうございました) stay fully alive and neutral.

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