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一石二鳥 isseki nichō Kill two birds with one stone

一石二鳥 (isseki nichō), one stone, two birds, is the English proverb kill two birds with one stone written in Chinese characters. The shogunate's English-Japanese dictionary of 1862 translated it as a sentence, and the four characters are a proverb by 1926. This study follows how it became a word, and the Chinese idiom most Meiji dictionaries gave in its place.

Japanese Scroll of Kill two birds with one stone (issekinichō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Kill two birds with one stone一石二鳥isseki nichō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

一石二鳥, one stone, two birds, is the English proverb kill two birds with one stone written in Chinese characters, and it was not born a word in Japanese. Its earliest witness is an English bishop's reproach of Thomas Hobbes, printed in 1656; in Japanese it is first a sentence in a dictionary, 石ニテ鳥二羽ヲ殺ス, with a stone kill two birds, in the English-Japanese dictionary the shogunate printed in 1862; then a sentence in prose in 1895, four characters glossed as Japanese words in 1906, a proverb with its own reading by 1926 and common by 1930. From Hepburn's of 1872 to the Kenkyūsha of 1939 most bilingual dictionaries gave 一挙両得, one move, two gains, from a Chinese history, in place of the picture, and a few gave both; the dictionaries admit the four-character word in 1962. The sense is the English proverb's and has never been anything else, two ends by one act, and in both languages the proverb approves of it.

Overview

The sense. The sense is the English proverb's and has never been anything else: two ends by one act. What moved is the form. In 1862 it is a dictionary's sentence, the English translated word for word [1]; in 1895 a sentence in prose with a verb [2]; in 1906 four characters read as Japanese words [3]; through 1920 a compound still dragging the English verb, kill, shoot, strike [4][5][6][7][8]; by 1926 a word with its own Sino-Japanese reading, called a proverb [9]; by 1930 common [10]. The tone crossed with it. In English the proverb approves: Shadwell in 1671 calls it that excellent thrifty proverb, a speaker of Fielding's in 1734 finds it better than my hopes, and the Spectator in 1902 thinks it convenient and economical [11][12]. Bramhall's use of 1656 is a reproach, but the reproach is in the clause he adds, whereas in truth he satisfieth neither, not in the proverb [13]. The Japanese word is the same plain approval of economy of effort.

The words. 一石, isseki, is one stone; 二鳥, nichō, two birds. The four characters are a calque: an English image written in Chinese characters, which is why the compound keeps the whole picture and loses nothing between the languages, and why one stone, two birds is exactly the literal rendering. The reading isseki nichō is attested by furigana from 1926 and in kana in 1936 [9][14]; before it settled, a translator of 1906 read the same four characters in Japanese, ひとつのいし、ふたつのとり, one stone, two birds, because the word did not yet exist for him [3]. Japanese already had two words for the thought. 一挙両得, ikkyo ryōtoku, one move, two gains, from a Chinese history of the seventh century, was written in Japanese long before the calque, in a commentary on a Zen master's letters printed in 1634, 一擧兩得ノ證據也 [15], and it is the word most dictionaries used for the English proverb from Hepburn 1872 to the Kenkyūsha of 1939 [16][17][18][19]; the shogunate's English-Japanese dictionary of 1862 had reached instead for 一擧兩用, with a question mark [1]. 一箭双雕, issen sōchō, one arrow, two eagles, is the Chinese proverb with the nearest image, and in Japanese it lives mostly in Zen commentary [20].

The proverb in English. The English is the source: the bilingual dictionaries in the historical record are the reception, and they are given in their place. The English proverb dictionaries date the wording to Bramhall 1656 and the thought earlier, to Plautus, to Smythe's 1590 hit two markes at one shoote and to Cotgrave's French of 1611 [11][21][12]. The English books of Japanese proverbs add four witnesses: Okada in 1958, who lists Isseki nichō beside Ikkyo ryōtoku [22], Buchanan in 1965, twice [23], Garrison in 2002 [24] and Trimnell in 2004 [25]. The proverb is not in David Galef's three Tuttle collections (1987, 2000, 2012) or in Guy Zona's book of 1996 [26][27][28][29].

The historical record

1656. John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, his printed quarrel with Thomas Hobbes, reply number twelve. T. H. thinks to kill two birds with one stone, and satisfy two arguments with one answer, whereas in truth he satisfieth neither [13]. The speaker is the bishop, and the use is a reproach: Hobbes has tried to do two things at once and done neither. A century earlier John Heywood's proverb collection of 1546 has the same thought in another image, I will learne to stop two gaps with one bush [30]. The English proverb dictionaries agree that Bramhall's is the first sentence with the birds and the stone: Tilley and the Oxford dictionary set Cotgrave's 1611 French, d'une pierre faire deux coups, before it, the Oxford dictionary adds Smythe's 1590 hit two markes at one shoote, and Apperson reaches back to Plautus' two boars in one glade [21][12][11].

1862 to 1892. Two English-Japanese dictionaries translate the picture. 英和対訳袖珍辞書, the English-Japanese dictionary the shogunate's 洋書調所 printed in 1862 under 堀達之助, has under Bird, after Birds of a feather flock together: To kill two birds with one stone. 石ニテ鳥二羽ヲ殺ス, with a stone kill two birds, and beside it in small characters 一擧兩用ノ意歟, perhaps in the sense of one move, two uses [1]. The editor translates the English word for word and offers a Chinese-style equivalent with a question mark; it is 兩用, two uses, not the 兩得, two gains, the later dictionaries settled on. The printing of 1869 carries the entry unchanged [31]. 島田豊's 雙解英和大辞典, in its second printing of 1892, gives both, under Bird: To kill two birds with one stone. 一石ヲ以テ二鳥ヲ殺ス. 一擧兩得 [32].

1895. 平田久, 露西亜帝国, a book on Russia from the 民友社 press. On China's policy in Korea: 支那の政治家は實に一石を投じて二鳥を斃んと試みたり, the statesmen of China tried, in truth, to throw one stone and fell two birds, with emphasis dots down the column and a side-head, 一石を以て二鳥を撃つ, to shoot two birds with one stone. A sentence, marked by its author as a striking figure; not yet a word [2].

1872 to 1929. Most bilingual dictionaries give the Chinese idiom instead. Hepburn, in 1872, under 一擧: — riyō toku, = to kill two birds with one stone [18]; the same equation made for Chinese in 1875, 一舉兩得 for to kill two birds with one stone, in Scarborough's collection of Chinese proverbs [33]; Brinkley (1896): Ikkyō ryōtoku, 一擧兩得, one effort and two gains, killing two birds with one stone [34]; Satow and Ishibashi (1904), under Bird: killing two birds with one stone, ikkyo-ryōtoku [35]; Chamberlain's vocabulary (1907): ikkyo ryōtoku, killing two birds with one stone [36]. 新撰英和熟語集 (1904): Kill two birds with one stone, to. 一擧兩得する [37]. 英和双解熟語大辞典 (1909): 一擧兩得す — To accomplish two objects at the same time or by one effort, on the same page as stop two gaps with one bush [38]. 新渡戸's 英和俗語熟語故事大辞典 (1911): 一擧にして兩得する [39]. 斎藤秀三郎's Idiomological (1915, 1918, 1924, 1928, unchanged): To kill two birds with one stone. 一擧兩得 [40][41][42][43]. 研究社新英和中辞典 (1929): 一擧兩得(に相當す) [44]. And from the Japanese side, 一擧兩得 = killing two birds with one stone in ten Japanese-English dictionaries from 1902 to 1925 [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. Among them one keeps the picture beside the idiom, as 島田 had in 1892: 渡部万蔵's 和英引用辞典 (1910), 一石を以て二羽の鳥を殺す、-俚、〔一擧兩得。-類書纂要〕To kill two birds with one stone [55].

1906. W. G. Smith's account of the Boer War, translated from English, 南阿戦争. は一石二鳥を斃すの戰略を案し, devised a strategy to fell two birds with one stone: the four characters are on the page, and the translator glosses them in Japanese, ひとつのいし・ふたつのとり over the compound and たふ over the verb. The compound exists as a written shape and not yet as a word [3].

1919 to 1923. The Taishō press. In the results of the National Diet Library's full-text search: 一石二鳥を擊つの兵法 in 山川菊栄 (1919) [4]; 一石二鳥を殺した and 一石二鳥を殺す式に in three books of 1920, the English verb kill still attached [6][7][8]; 一石二鳥主義, the first compound built on it, in 1923 [56].

1923. 現代文選 教授参考資料, a schoolbook. A dialogue on a poem [57]: 老「一石二鳥といふ譯ですな。詩「いや二兎を追うて一兎をも得てゐません。 One stone, two birds, you mean. No; chasing two hares and catching neither. Two Western imports set against each other, both current enough to be quipped.

1926. 猪狩史山, 女禍伝. 一石二鳥を打つといふ諺はこんなことかも知れぬ, the proverb about striking two birds with one stone may mean something like this, with the furigana いつせきにちよう over the four characters and ことわざ over 諺. The earliest on-reading known, and the four-character word called a proverb; the sentence had been called one in 1908, by the Japanese translator of Ian Hamilton's A Staff Officer's Scrap-Book of the Russo-Japanese War: 諺にいふ一つの石にて二つの鳥を打留めたるなり, as the proverb says, two birds brought down with one stone [9][58].

1936. A shorthand record of the Kanamojikai's general meeting. イッセキ ニチョウ ト ユウ マデ ニ ユカナクトモ, the reading in katakana [14].

1927 and 1939. Two dictionaries still without the word. Rose-Innes's character dictionary, in its 1927 edition, lists 一擧兩得, killing two birds with one stone, among the compounds of 一 and no 一石二鳥 [59]; the Kenkyūsha Japanese-English dictionary in its printing of 1939 has no entry between 一席 and 一隻眼, and renders the English idiom under 二つ as 二つの目的を達する, serve a double purpose; kill (bring down) two birds with one stone [19].

1948. 三省堂, 集約英和辞典. kill two birds with one stone 一石二鳥を殺す, 一擧兩得する: the first dictionary in a local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books to print the four characters, and it still gives the old equation beside them [60].

1962 to 1980. The dictionaries admit the word. Nelson's character dictionary of 1962, under 一: 石二鳥 isseki-nichō, killing two birds with one stone [61]. Kenkyūsha's fourth edition of 1974 gives it a headword, isseki-nichō 一石二鳥 n. killing two birds with one stone, the book's own square brackets offering the same for one, with It serves a double purpose and It's a two-bird-one-stone solution for それは一石二鳥だ, and uses it in an example under 正に [62]. Kenkyūsha's English-Japanese of 1980, under kill: two birds with one stone 一石二鳥を得る, 一挙両得する, the calque first and the old equation second [63].

The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉: 一つの事をして同時に二つの利益・効果をあげること。一挙両得, with the note that it comes from the Western proverb To kill two birds with one stone. 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives its first citation as 八木義徳's story 劉広福 of 1944. ことわざを知る辞典 tells the whole story in two sentences: 幕末から英和辞典に収載され、明治期には「一挙両得」または「一石を以て二鳥を殺す」と訳されていました。後者が大正期に短縮され、四字熟語の形になりました, carried in English-Japanese dictionaries from the end of the Edo period, and in the Meiji rendered as ikkyo ryōtoku or as one stone to kill two birds; the latter was shortened in the Taishō into the four-character form [64][17]. The public-domain corpus counted by five-year bin agrees: one book before 1910, ten in 1920 to 1924, sixty-three in 1925 to 1929, three hundred and fifteen in 1930 to 1934, seven hundred and eighty-five in 1940 to 1944 [10].

What is not a source. 一挙両得 comes from the 晋書, in a memorial on settling farmers on the western frontier: 一舉兩得，外實內寬, one move, two gains: the border filled and the interior relieved [16]. 一箭双雕 comes from the 北史, where the general 長孫晟 is handed two arrows for two eagles fighting over meat and 遂一發雙貫焉, with one shot pierced both [20]. Neither is the source of 一石二鳥; they are what Japanese already had when the English arrived, and the dictionaries reached for the first of them for forty years. 二兎を追う者は一兎をも得ず, the two hares, is another Western import of the same generation. Latin and French have their own images for the thought, as Wiktionary reports [65].

The proverb in English

1918. 武信由太郎, 武信和英大辞典, page 601. Under ikkyo 一擧, the example sentence: それこそ一擧兩得である: It is, as it were, killing two hares with one stone. / It really serves two ends. Hares, not birds: the English proverb's usual bird is not what the 1918 dictionary printed [66].

1928. 竹原常太, スタンダード和英大辭典, page 356. A headword of its own: ikkyoryōtoku (一擧兩得) v. to cut both ways; kill two birds with one stone, with two dated examples, Kill two birds with one stone; do your duty to your uncle and to yourself at the same time.—Worden and The fixing of maximum prices by the city of Paris has cut both ways.—Times (N.Y.) [67].

1946. 竹原常太, スタンダード和英辞典, page 296. 一擧兩得 to kill two birds with one stone; cut both ways [68].

1958. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, pages 12 and 187. In his list of English proverbs with Japanese equivalents: Killing two birds with one stone. (Isseki nichō; Ikkyo ryōtoku.), the calque first. Under 虻蜂取らず he sets the English proverb against its opposites: It is all very fine to talk about "killing two birds with one stone," but "he who runs after two hares will catch neither" [22].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, pages 159 and 177. Under patience: Ikkyo ryōtoku: "A single stroke with double gain." (Lit., "One effort two gains.") English parallel: To kill two birds with one stone. And under a later heading: Isseki ni chō: "One stone, two birds." This is a direct translation into Japanese of the English proverb "To kill two birds with one stone" [23]. Correct on both counts, and the earliest English book cited here to say the Japanese word is a translation.

2002. Jeffrey G. Garrison, Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms, page 150. isseki-nichō 一石二鳥 "one stone, two birds": to kill two birds with one stone, with two sentences, the second stretching the word to 一石三鳥, three birds [24].

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, page 61. To kill two birds with one stone, then: The concept of "killing two birds with one stone" is well known to English-speakers, and the reading of the compound's parts; the loan acknowledged as a loan [25].

Today. The house title, Kill two birds with one stone, is the source itself, and the page's one stone, two birds is the literal Japanese; nothing here needs translating.

A reading

What entered Japanese at the end of the Edo period was the English proverb as a sentence, translated word for word in the shogunate's English-Japanese dictionary of 1862; the Meiji dictionaries after Hepburn mostly set 一挙両得 in its place, and the prose kept the sentence. The ことわざを知る辞典 has this right: the proverb was in the English-Japanese dictionaries from the end of the Edo period, rendered in the Meiji as 一挙両得 or as 一石を以て二鳥を殺す. The four-character word is a Taishō coinage, as the same dictionary says, though the four characters were once on a page in 1906, and the dictionaries did not admit it until after the war: the Kenkyūsha of 1939 has none, Nelson's of 1962 has it, the Kenkyūsha of 1974 gives it a headword. The story is a seventeenth-century bishop's jibe at a philosopher, translated word for word by a shogunate dictionary in 1862, set aside by most Meiji dictionaries for a Chinese idiom, rendered by a 1906 translator as hitotsu no ishi, futatsu no tori because he had no word for it, called a proverb by a translator in 1908 and, in four characters with their own reading, by a novelist in 1926, and everyone's by 1930. 一箭双雕 is the Chinese image nearest the English one.

References

  1. 堀達之助 ed., 『英和対訳袖珍辞書』, 洋書調所, Edo, 1862, p. 77, s.v. Bird. Waseda University Library, 古典籍総合データベース, ho06_01955, image 45. https://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ho06/ho06_01955/ho06_01955_p0045.jpg
  2. 平田久『露西亜帝国』, 民友社, 1895, p. 296, National Diet Library pid 767334, scan 168. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/767334/1/168
  3. W. G. Smith『南阿戦争』, 基督教書類会社, 1906, p. 55, National Diet Library pid 776828, scan 32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/776828/1/32
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  40. 斎藤秀三郎, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 1915, p. 101, s.v. Bird (the shelved copy).
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  47. 『実用和英新辞典』, 1906, National Diet Library pid 903029, scan 142. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903029/1/142
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  53. 上田『ローマ字びき国語辞典』, 1915, National Diet Library pid 1900620, scans 174 and 375. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1900620/1/174
  54. 上田『ローマ字びき国語辞典』, 1925, National Diet Library pid 1900619, scans 176 and 377. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1900619/1/176
  55. 渡部万蔵『和英引用辞典』, 1910, National Diet Library pid 870190, scan 21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870190/1/21
  56. 『震災後の日本』, 1923, National Diet Library pid 963939, a hit in the library's full-text search; no scan is given. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/963939
  57. 『現代文選 教授参考資料』中巻, 1923, National Diet Library pid 918752, scan 63. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/918752/1/63
  58. イアン・ハミルトン, 大阪新報社編輯局 trans., 『日露役観戦雑記』, second volume, 大阪新報社, 1907–1908, National Diet Library pid 774234, scan 86. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/774234/1/86
  59. Arthur Rose-Innes, Beginners' Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Characters, second enlarged edition, 1927, in the Harvard University Press reproduction of 1944, p. 4, the compounds of 一 (the shelved copy).
  60. 三省堂『集約英和辞典』, 1948, National Diet Library pid 2134829, scan 23. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2134829/1/23
  61. Andrew Nathaniel Nelson, The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, second revised edition, Tuttle, 1974 printing (first edition 1962), p. 1, character 1, 一 (the shelved copy).
  62. 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 559, s.v. isseki-nichō, and p. 1058, s.v. masa-ni (the shelved copy).
  63. 小稲義男 ed., Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1980, p. 982, s.v. kill (the shelved copy).
  64. 「一石二鳥」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/一石二鳥
  65. 「kill two birds with one stone」, Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_two_birds_with_one_stone
  66. 武信由太郎 編『武信和英大辞典』, 研究社, 1918, p. 601, s.v. ikkyo. National Diet Library pid 925665, scan 309. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925665/1/309
  67. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英大辭典』, 宝文館, 1928, p. 356, s.v. ikkyoryōtoku. National Diet Library pid 1126806, scan 186. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126806/1/186
  68. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英辞典』, 大修館書店, 1946, p. 296, s.v. ikkyoryōtoku. National Diet Library pid 1126792, scan 154. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/154

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 一石二鳥 (isseki nichō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/isseki-nicho.