Base Te Shimau - To completely verb in Japanese

Today’s lesson: Verb (BaseTE) + Shimau. – To completely verb (negative connotation)

Sanseido’s Daily concise Japanese English Dictionary defines the verb shimau as, “to finish completely, or to put an end to”.

For this plug and play grammar to work all you need do is take any Japanese verb and put it into base te. (If you need help putting verbs in bases, go here.) In Ex. 1 we have the verbs for taberu (to eat), and nomu (to drink). Putting them into base TE we have tabete, and nonde. Now adding the past tense of the verb shimau we have:

Ex. 1. Tabete shimatta! I ate it all,
Nonde shimatta! I drank it all!

o. Finishing it to the end you want to use base II + owaru.
i.e. Yomiowatta – I have finished reading it.
p. If we wanted to put this into the future tense leave the verb shimau in plain form or change into polite form shimaimasu.
i.e. Tabete shimaimasu - I will completely eat it. (Sometime in the future)

Ex.2. Tsukatte shimatta – I used it all, I used all of it. – (tsukau – to use)

Ex.3. Nakushite shimatta - I lost it all, or I lost all of it. (nakusu – to lose)

Ex. 4 Nurete shimatta – It got completely wet, or it’s soaked etc. (nureru - to get wet)


O-Shimai is often used to signify endings in a variety of nouns that have a beginning. . In Japanese you can think of Open / start (begin) as close / shut (end).

O-Shimai is often said to children get a hurried response from the child which basically is saying, “That’s it!…No more playing!.” at bedtime when a parent is desirous of hurrying a child to bed, expressing that “it’s time to go to bed it is officially over (O-Shimai)” Similarly the word that expresses, “oh crap” in Japanese is shimau in past tense or “shimatta.”. Shimatta in this case means, to be wrung, or wringed.

Start using your new base TE + shimau bumpo on your friends today! They’ll be glad you did. And don’t forget to Ganbatte Ne.! Do your Best! McCluskey