Word.ws English Dictionary

danmei

danmei noun: a genre of Chinese fiction depicting romantic relationships between male characters.

Noun

danmei (uncountable)

  1. A genre of Chinese fiction depicting romantic relationships between male characters.
    • Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, danmei has also been influenced by Euro-American slash fictions. During this time, an extensive range of danmei works in various forms, including original fictions, fan fictions, manga, animations, audio series and TV dramas, has been created...2021, Liang Ge, “Problematizing heteronormativity: Performativity, resignification and A/B/O fiction in Chinese danmei literature”, in East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, volume 7, number 2, →DOI...
    • Breaking Through the Clouds is a police series as well as a danmei manhua, so it's a great option for anyone who wants a romantic story with an uncommon duo and the thrilling quality of a procedural series like Criminal Minds or CSI.2025 January 12, Chelsea Steele, Mayra Garcia, Jahanvi Shah, & Maria Remizova, “30 Must-Read Boys' Love Manhua For BL Fans”, in CBR, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2025

Origin of danmei

From Mandarin 耽美 (dānměi, “indulging beauty”).

Questions about danmei

What does danmei mean?
Danmei means a genre of Chinese fiction depicting romantic relationships between male characters.
What part of speech is danmei?
Danmei is a noun.

Words near danmei in the dictionary

  1. Danlos
  2. Danloses
  3. Danlugan
  4. danmaku
  5. Danmark
  6. danmei
  7. danmuji
  8. Dann
  9. danna
  10. danna-drag
  11. dannas

Source and license

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