着る (kiru) conjugation
to put on (clothes above your waist); to wear
着る (きる, kiru) is an ichidan verb. Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes. Every form below is tappable — hear it, then say it back.
Conjugation table
| Form | Plain (casual) | Polite (~ます) | When you use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dictionary / plain | 着る kiru | 着ます kimasu | The form you look up. Also the casual present and future. |
| Plain negative | 着ない kinai | 着ません kimasen | “doesn’t / won’t”. From here it conjugates like an i-adjective. |
| Plain past | 着た kita | 着ました kimashita | The casual past — same ending as the te-form, with た/だ. |
| Plain past negative | 着なかった kinakatta | 着ませんでした kimasendeshita | “didn’t”. The negative past, still i-adjective-shaped. |
| Te-form | 着て kite | — | The connector: requests, linking clauses, ~ている. |
| Progressive (~ている) | 着ている kiteiru | 着ています kiteimasu | “is ~ing”, or an ongoing resulting state. |
| Desire (~たい) | 着たい kitai | 着たいです kitaidesu | “want to ~”. Behaves as an i-adjective. |
| Volitional | 着よう kiyou | 着ましょう kimashou | “let’s ~” / “I think I’ll ~”. |
| Potential | 着られる kirareru | 着られます kiraremasu | “can ~”. What you could do; the object often takes が. |
| Passive | 着られる kirareru | 着られます kiraremasu | “is ~ed”. Also the honorific and the suffering passive. |
| Causative | 着させる kisaseru | 着させます kisasemasu | Make or let someone do it. |
| Causative-passive | 着させられる kisaserareru | 着させられます kisaseraremasu | Be made to do it — the long one. |
| Imperative | 着ろ kiro | 着てください kitekudasai | Blunt order. Use ~てください in real life. |
| Prohibitive | 着るな kiruna | — | “don’t!” — dictionary form + な. |
| Conditional (~ば) | 着れば kireba | — | “if ~”. General rules and hypotheticals. |
| Conditional (~たら) | 着たら kitara | — | “if / when ~”. The everyday conditional. |
🔊 Tap any Japanese word to hear it spoken.
Why it conjugates this way
Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes.
See the full rules on the verb conjugation guide.