Word.ws English Dictionary

chow mein

/ˌtʃaʊ ˈmeɪn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Hong Kong/tʃaʊ min/

chow mein noun: a westernized Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles with vegetables and meat or seafood.

chow mein: a westernized Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles with vegetables and meat or seafood
Image: ♡yuen♫, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chow mein (countable and uncountable, plural chow meins)

  1. A westernized Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles with vegetables and meat or seafood.
    • I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
      Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
      He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
      Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.1978, “Werewolves of London”, in Warren Zevon, LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel (music), Excitable Boy, performed by Warren Zevon
    • Our tasty grooves are better than a chicken chow mein!2006, “POD (The Pick of Destiny)”, in The Pick of Destiny, performed by Tenacious D
  2. (India, countable, offensive, slang) A person from Northeast India.
    • Since I come from the North-eastern part of India myself and belong to a minority race, I too have suffered from racism, at least in its milder forms. I’ve been called "chinky", "momo", "chowmein", and more.2017 May 23, Alana Golmei, “Let’s talk about racism”, in Hindustan Times, Delhi

Forms of chow mein

pluralchow meins
alternative formchaomian
alternative formchau min

Origin of chow mein

Borrowed from Taishanese 炒麵／炒面 (cau² men⁵, “stir-fry noodles”).

Words formed from chow mein

Questions about chow mein

What does chow mein mean?
Chow mein means a westernized Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles with vegetables and meat or seafood.
What part of speech is chow mein?
Chow mein is a noun.
How do you pronounce chow mein?
Chow mein is pronounced /ˌtʃaʊ ˈmeɪn/.
What is the plural of chow mein?
The plural of chow mein is chow meins.

Words near chow mein in the dictionary

  1. chow halls
  2. chow hound
  3. chow hounds
  4. chow line
  5. chow lines
  6. chow mein
  7. chow mein bun
  8. chow mein buns
  9. chow ta
  10. chow tah
  11. chow tar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chow mein (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-chow mein.wav.

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