gweilo
gweilo noun: a white person in China, (particularly) a man; a ‘foreign devil’.
Noun
gweilo (plural gweilos or gweilo)
- A white person in China, (particularly) a man; a ‘foreign devil’.
- She had ruffled the bed and laid a frilly nightdress on the floor because so far as the block was concerned Phoebe was the half-kwailo bastard who whored with the fat foreign devil.1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 179
- Synonyms:
- white person
Synonyms of gweilo
- white person
Forms of gweilo
| plural | gweilos |
|---|---|
| plural | gweilo |
| alternative form | gwailo |
| alternative form | kwailo |
Origin of gweilo
From Cantonese 鬼佬 (gwai² lou²), from 鬼 (gwai², “ghost”) + 佬 (lou², “guy, man”).
Questions about gweilo
- What does gweilo mean?
- Gweilo means a white person in China, (particularly) a man; a ‘foreign devil’.
- What part of speech is gweilo?
- Gweilo is a noun.
- What is the plural of gweilo?
- The plural of gweilo is gweilos.
Words near gweilo in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gweilo (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: “gweilo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gweilo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.