日本語道場

Nihongo Dojo — N3 → N2

Grammar

N2

~ぐるみ

~gurumi

entire, whole (e.g. family-wide)

When to use it

Use ~ぐるみ to state that an act or activity involved an entire group as a unit — the whole family, the whole company, the whole organization. In business writing it appears most often in reporting on misconduct (組織ぐるみ・会社ぐるみ), where it carries a strong accusatory nuance of collective complicity, and in describing community- or family-level involvement. It attaches only to a small set of nouns, so treat it as a fixed vocabulary item rather than a productive suffix.

Formation

  • Noun + ぐるみ — the only pattern; 家族ぐるみ・会社ぐるみ・組織ぐるみ・町ぐるみ・地域ぐるみ・身ぐるみ
  • Functions adverbially (organization-wide + verb) or attributively with の: 組織ぐるみの不正
  • Verbs / i-adjectives / na-adjectives: does not attach. For "whole" with other word classes use 全体で・~を挙げて
  • 身ぐるみ is idiomatic (身ぐるみ剥がされる = stripped of everything)

Examples

  • It is reported to have been organization-wide misconduct.

  • This cover-up is seen as company-wide.

  • With that client we socialize as whole families.

  • The plan is to tackle recruitment on a community-wide basis.

  • We can't accept terms that would strip us of everything.