Word.ws English Dictionary

gaijin

/ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/

gaijin noun: a non-Japanese person.

Noun

gaijin (plural gaijin or gaijins)

  1. A non-Japanese person.
    • The peculiar position of his group, according to Mr. Okimoto, is shown by the Japanese habit of referring to such persons as either nisei or nikkeijin —of Japanese descent—instead of calling them gaijin, that is, foreigners, or identifying them by nationality.1973 October 4, Robert Trumbull, “Offspring of Japanese Settlers in U.S. Find Japan Frustrating”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2022
    • For a while he began to speak Japanese, rather slangy, never having seemed to learn it — karoshi for death from overwork, yakitaori-ya for eatery, and gaijin for clumsy foreigner.1976, Bill Henderson, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Pushcart Press, page 207
  2. (Hawaii) A white person.

gaijin meaning in Hindi

gaijin in Hindi

(Japan) a non-Japanese person
गाईजिन gāījin, विदेशी videśī

Examples of gaijin in a sentence

  • The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd was a gaijin crowd.1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 10:
  • And I did not intend to live my life as a gaijin—not merely, like the expatriate, someone by definition permanently out of place but someone unwanted as well.1992, David Pollack, Reading Against Culture, Cornell Press, page 230:
  • [...] I was placed in the gaijins' dormitory area up on the third floor.2004, Troy Anderson, The Way of Go, Simon and Schuster, page 149:
  • Oh's pitchers later acknowledged that they were instructed—under penalty of a fine—to throw no strikes to the gaijin.2006, Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball, page 127:

Forms of gaijin

pluralgaijin
pluralgaijins

Plural of gaijin: gaijin or gaijins

Origin of gaijin

Borrowed from Japanese 外人 (gaijin, “foreigner”), from Middle Chinese 外人 (ngwajᴴ nyin). Compare Mandarin 外人 (wàirén), from Old Chinese 外人 (*ŋʷaːds njin, “foreigner, outsider” < “non-relative”), from 外 (wài, “outside, outer”) + 人 (rén, “person”).

Words formed from gaijin

Phrases with gaijin

Questions about gaijin

What does gaijin mean?
Gaijin means a non-Japanese person.
What is gaijin in Hindi?
Gaijin in Hindi is गाईजिन (gāījin), विदेशी (videśī). See Gaijin meaning in Hindi.
How do you use gaijin in a sentence?
The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd was a gaijin crowd.
What part of speech is gaijin?
Gaijin is a noun.
How do you pronounce gaijin?
Gaijin is pronounced /ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/.
What is the plural of gaijin?
The plural of gaijin is gaijin.

Words near gaijin in the dictionary

  1. gaieties
  2. gaiety
  3. gaieté de cœur
  4. Gaige
  5. gaiji
  6. gaijin
  7. gaijin card
  8. gaijin cards
  9. gaijins
  10. Gaika
  11. Gaikas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gaijin (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gaijin.wav.

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