bonsai

UK/ˈbɒnsaɪ//ˈbɑnsaɪ/

bonsai noun: a tree or plant that has been miniaturized by planting it in a small pot, restricting its roots, and by careful pruning. Also the misspelling of banzai.

Image: Ragesoss, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bonsai (countable and uncountable, plural bonsai or bonsais)

(countable) A tree or plant that has been miniaturized by planting it in a small pot, restricting its roots, and by careful pruning.
(uncountable) The art of planting and growing trees or plants in such a manner.

Verb

bonsai (third-person singular simple present bonsais, present participle bonsaiing, simple past and past participle bonsaied)

(transitive) To make into a bonsai by restricting the roots and pruning.
- Could I be a father who was, so to speak, bonsaiing his children, trimming urban roots, and then twisting the emerging branches?2001, Dennis Parks, Living in the Country Growing Weird, page 50

Also used as

bonsai is also the misspelling of banzai.

bonsai meaning in Marathi, Telugu, Arabic and Malay

bonsai in Marathi

a miniaturized tree or plant: बॉनसाई bŏnsāī
the art of growing miniaturized trees or plants: बॉनसाई bŏnsāī

bonsai in Telugu

a miniaturized tree or plant: మరుగుజ్జు చెట్టు marugujju ceṭṭu, బోన్సాయి bōnsāyi

bonsai in Arabic

a miniaturized tree or plant: بُونْسَاي būnsāy

bonsai in Malay

a miniaturized tree or plant: bonsai
the art of growing miniaturized trees or plants: bonsai

More languagesFewer languages

bonsai in Indonesian: bonsai
bonsai in Thai: บอนไซ bɔɔn-sai, bɔn-sai
bonsai in Vietnamese: bồn tài

Examples of bonsai in a sentence

She bartered a bonsai for one of the rare books in my library.
Without Soviet support surrounding the missile crisis, Cuba's military would have been merely a bonsai army and they would have quickly succumbed to any serious invasion from the west.
A jumblesome profusion of cuttings and grafts offers a more promising metaphor than does bonsai.

All 10 example sentences with bonsai

Forms of bonsai

Noun
plural	bonsai
plural	bonsais
Verb
third-person singular present	bonsais
present participle	bonsaiing
past participle	bonsaied
past	bonsaied

Plural of bonsai: bonsai or bonsais

Origin of bonsai

From Japanese 盆栽 (bonsai), from Middle Chinese 盆 (MC bwon, “bowl”) + 栽 (MC tsoj|dzojH, “to plant”).

Words formed from bonsai

Phrases with bonsai

bonsai armies

Questions about bonsai

What does bonsai mean?: Bonsai means a tree or plant that has been miniaturized by planting it in a small pot, restricting its roots, and by careful pruning.
What is bonsai in Marathi?: Bonsai in Marathi is बॉनसाई (bŏnsāī). See Bonsai meaning in Marathi.
What part of speech is bonsai?: Bonsai can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce bonsai?: Bonsai is pronounced /ˈbɑnsaɪ/ (US).
What is the plural of bonsai?: The plural of bonsai is bonsai.

Words near bonsai in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bonsai (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bonsai.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bonsai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bonsai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.