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wah

nouninterjectionnouninterjectioncommon in dialogue

  • //wɑː//
  • /[wa(ːː)]/
  • /[wæ(ːː)]/
  • /[wæ̃̂ːː]/
  • //wæː//
  • /[wä(ːː)˦˨]/

A cry of fright, distress, etc. (especially of an infant or young child)

noun

  1. 1

    archaicThe red panda.

Etymology

From Nepali वाँ दोन्काँ (wā̃ donkā̃).

interjection

  1. 1

    A cry of fright, distress, etc. (especially of an infant or young child)

  2. 2

    A cry of amazement, delight, etc.

    ‘Wah! Wah! Wah!’ they shouted and threw up their arms in delight.

Etymology

Imitative.

noun

  1. 1

    wah-wah.

interjection

  1. 1

    Wow!; whoa! (expressing surprise, gratification, exhaustion or exasperation)

    Wah, you quite brave hor...

    “Wah, so tall already, ah? Primary what already, ha?

Etymology

From Cantonese 嘩 /哗 (waa³) or Mandarin 哇 (wa).

Forms

plural
wahs
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).