Skip to content
Allin

Japanese

adjectivenounproper nouncommon in dialogue

  • //ˌdʒæp.əˈniːz//

Of, relating to, derived from, or characteristic of Japan, its people, language, or culture.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of, relating to, derived from, or characteristic of Japan, its people, language, or culture.

    A Japanese saw is one that cuts on the pull stroke rather than on the push stroke.

    In the United States, Japanese animation has had a tremendous surge in popularity over the last few years.

    Then, as I walked back to the Miyako Hybrid, the snow-white hotel, with its perfectly black parking lot and perfectly trimmed palm trees, looked more like a computer rendering of a building than a building itself. And that is very Japanese.

    Japanese retail stores have strove to, and have succeeded in, fulfilling these severe demands, and in doing so, have constantly had to innovate both technologically and institutionally in order to keep up with the competition.

  2. 2

    Of, relating to, derived from, or characteristic of Japan, its people, language, or culture. Of or relating to the Yamato people.

    The Ainu were subject to forced assimilation by the Japanese since at least the 18th century.

Etymology

Etymology tree Hokkien 日本 (Ji̍t-pún)bor. Malay Jepangbor. Portuguese Japãobor. ▲ Malay Jepangbor. Dutch Japanbor. English Japan Proto-Indo-European *-iskos Proto-Germanic *-iskaz Proto-West Germanic *-iskbor. Late Latin -iscus ▲ Vulgar Latin -iscus Latin -ēnsis Old French -eisbor. Middle English -eys English -ese English Japanese From Japan + -ese after the model of earlier Portuguese japonês, New Latin japonensis, French japonais, etc.

noun

  1. 1

    A native or inhabitant of Japan.

    2007 October 16, Madeleine Brand, “Japan Struggles to Meet Its CO2 Emissions Limits”, Day to Day, National Public Radio, Motoyuki Shibata isn’t a typical Japanese.

    […] the majority of Japanese voted to return the conservative Liberal Democratic Party to power after the 3/11 disaster.

  2. 2

    A member of the predominant ethnic group of Japan, also found throughout the world in diaspora.

    A Japanese will typically have black hair, brown eyes, and pale skin.

    […] 90 percent of Japanese [in Hawaii] voted Democratic (Coffman 2003: 278).

  3. 3

    Variant of Japanese foodEllipsis of Japanese food.

    Let’s go out to eat. I’m in the mood for Japanese.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A language that is primarily spoken in East Asia and is the official language of Japan.

    I’ve been studying Japanese for three years, and I still can’t order pizza in Tokyo!

    What Japanese you speak also depends on your gender. There’s a “rough” language for men and a more “ladylike” language for women, but you must understand both.

Forms

plural
Japaneses
comparative
more Japanese
superlative
most Japanese
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).