Word.ws English Dictionary

gaiwan

Syllables: gai·wan/ɡaɪˈwɑːn/

gaiwan noun: a Chinese lidded cup or bowl, used to steep tea, sometimes including a saucer, developed during the Ming dynasty as an improvement upon the (lidless) chawan.

gaiwan: a Chinese lidded cup or bowl, used to steep tea, sometimes including a saucer, developed during the...
Image: Sjschen, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

gaiwan (plural gaiwans or gaiwan)

  1. A Chinese lidded cup or bowl, used to steep tea, sometimes including a saucer, developed during the Ming dynasty as an improvement upon the (lidless) chawan.
    • Perhaps the greatest vessel for brewing tea is one of the most simple in construction and design: the gaiwan. In use since at least the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the gaiwan is ubiquitous in Chinese tea culture and consists of only a saucer, a bowl, and a lid.2015, Joseph Wesley Uhl, The Art and Craft of Tea, Quarry Books, →ISBN, page 83

Forms of gaiwan

pluralgaiwans
pluralgaiwan

Origin of gaiwan

From Mandarin 蓋碗 /盖碗 (gàiwǎn, literally “lidded bowl”).

Questions about gaiwan

What does gaiwan mean?
Gaiwan means a Chinese lidded cup or bowl, used to steep tea, sometimes including a saucer, developed during the Ming dynasty as an improvement upon the (lidless) chawan.
What part of speech is gaiwan?
Gaiwan is a noun.
How do you pronounce gaiwan?
Gaiwan is pronounced /ɡaɪˈwɑːn/.
What is the plural of gaiwan?
The plural of gaiwan is gaiwans.

Words near gaiwan in the dictionary

  1. Gaitskellism
  2. Gaitskellite
  3. Gaitskellites
  4. Gaitskells
  5. Gaius
  6. gaiwan
  7. gaiwans
  8. gaj
  9. gaja
  10. Gajan
  11. Gajanan

Source and license

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