Word.ws English Dictionary

Chinatown

Syllables: Chi·na·townUK/ˈtʃaɪnətaʊn/US/ˈt͡ʃaɪnəˌtaʊn/

Chinatown noun: a district of a city or town (in a country other than China) in which there is a large concentration of Chinese residents and businesses.

Noun

Chinatown (plural Chinatowns)

  1. A district of a city or town (in a country other than China) in which there is a large concentration of Chinese residents and businesses.
    • She grabbed his hand again and marched him under the fake Oriental archway that heralded the beginning of Chinatown.2002, Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, Penguin Books (2003), page 185
    • Freud’s itinerary in the novel hews neatly to what he and his colleagues really did on their trip to the U.S.: They visited Chinatown and Central Park and the Met. They made it down to Coney Island, though Jung and Freud’s boat ride through the Tunnel of Love seems to be a Doctorowian flight of...2022 September 7, Gillian Brassil, “The Real Lives of Early 20th-Century Celebrities, as Depicted in ‘Ragtime’”, in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022
  2. (broadly, proscribed) A similar district filled with East Asians and Southeast Asians.

Proper noun

Chinatown

  1. A neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona, United States.
  2. A neighborhood near Downtown Los Angeles, California, United States.
  3. A neighborhood of Oakland, California, United States.
  4. A neighborhood of Sacramento, California, United States.
  5. A neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States.
  6. A neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States.
  7. A neighborhood of San Jose, California, United States.
  8. A neighborhood of Denver, Colorado, United States.
  9. A neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States.
  10. A neighborhood of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States.
  11. A neighborhood of Boise, Idaho, United States.
  12. A neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Show 9 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
  2. A neighborhood of Portland, Maine, United States,
  3. A neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, United States,
  4. A neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States,
  5. A neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, United States,
  6. A neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, United States,
  7. A neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States.
    • Freud’s itinerary in the novel hews neatly to what he and his colleagues really did on their trip to the U.S.: They visited Chinatown and Central Park and the Met. They made it down to Coney Island, though Jung and Freud’s boat ride through the Tunnel of Love seems to be a Doctorowian flight of...2022 September 7, Gillian Brassil, “The Real Lives of Early 20th-Century Celebrities, as Depicted in ‘Ragtime’”, in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022
  8. A neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States, also called Old Town and Skid Row
  9. A neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States.

Chinatown meaning in Tagalog, Arabic, Malay and Indonesian

Chinatown in Tagalog

a Chinese district outside China
China Town

Chinatown in Arabic

a Chinese district outside China
حَيّ صِينِي ḥayy ṣīnī, تْشَايْنَاتَاوْن tšāynātāwn

Chinatown in Malay

a Chinese district outside China
Pekan Cina

Chinatown in Indonesian

a Chinese district outside China
pecinan
More languagesFewer languages
Chinatown in Thai
ไชน่าทาวน์ chai-nâa-taao
Chinatown in Vietnamese
phố người Hoa, khu Hoa-kiều

Forms of Chinatown

pluralChinatowns

Origin of Chinatown

From China + town.

Words formed from Chinatown

Phrases with Chinatown

Questions about Chinatown

What does Chinatown mean?
Chinatown means a district of a city or town (in a country other than China) in which there is a large concentration of Chinese residents and businesses.
What is Chinatown in Tagalog?
Chinatown in Tagalog is China Town. See Chinatown meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is Chinatown?
Chinatown can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Chinatown?
Chinatown is pronounced /ˈtʃaɪnətaʊn/ (UK).
What is the plural of Chinatown?
The plural of Chinatown is Chinatowns.

Words near Chinatown in the dictionary

  1. chinaroot
  2. chinaroots
  3. Chinarra
  4. chinars
  5. chinas
  6. Chinatown
  7. Chinatown of Quezon City
  8. Chinatowner
  9. Chinatowners
  10. Chinatowns
  11. Chinatsu

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Chinatown (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-Chinatown.ogg.

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