Word.ws English Dictionary

han

/hæn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

unstressed/hən/

han is the plural simple present of have.

Meaning of have

Verb

have (third-person singular simple present has, present participle having, simple past and past participle had)

  1. (transitive) To possess, own.
    • I have a house and a car.
  2. (transitive) To hold, as something at someone's disposal.
    • Look what I have here—a frog I found on the street!
  3. (transitive) To include as a part, ingredient, or feature.
    • The stove has a handle. The shirt has sleeves.
  4. (transitive) Used to state the existence or presence of someone in a specified relationship with the subject.
    • I have two sisters.
  5. (transitive) To consume or use up (a particular substance or resource, especially food or drink).
    • I have breakfast at six o'clock.
  6. (transitive) To undertake or perform (an action or activity).
    • Can I have a look at that?

See all 38 meanings of have

Noun

han (uncountable)

  1. Sorrowful resentment, as a part of the Korean cultural identity.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Han

Han

  1. An imperial Chinese dynasty, ruling (with interruptions) from 206 BC to AD 220, marked by the expansion of the Yellow River's Huaxia culture to the recent conquests of the Qin and a flowering of economic, literary, and scientific development
    • According to the hair-dress it is probably that of a woman. There are some 102 slight traces of polychromy on the white slip. Other heads possessing similar qualities were dug up from early Han tombs in Pao-chi district, Shensi Province.1950, Lubor Hájek, Chinese Art, Czechoslovakia: Spring Books, →OCLC, page 41
    • The eclectism of political thought during the Han is reflected in Liu Hsiang's evaluation of Shang Yang.1977, Li Yu-ning, Shang Yang's Reforms and State Control in China, M. E. Sharpe, page xxxiii
    Synonyms:
    Han Chinese
  2. The Chinese ethnicity, when distinguished from other peoples of the Chinese state
    • Trade was the major economic link between Tibet and other regions in China. Special economic systems (estate, serfdom) made it impossible for Han immigrants to engage in agriculture and animal husbandry in Tibet. The geographic features of the plateau (high elevation, rarefied air, mountains, etc.)...1995, Rong Ma, edited by Calvin Goldscheider, Economic Patterns, Migration, and Ethnic Relationships in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China (Population, Ethnicity, and Nation-Building), Westview...
    • According to the 2000 census, the Han make up 92 percent of China's population; the minority groups combine for about 8 percent (about 106 million people).2006, Sheila Hollihan-Elliot, Muslims in China, Mason Crest Publishers, →ISBN, page 55
  3. A river in central China.
    • Hankow, China, is located 600 miles from the coast, on the north bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang River, at its junction with the Han River.1902 January 5, L. S. Wilcox, “Conditions in Hankow.; American Trade on the Pacific and the far East”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 18 Sep 2023, ANNUAL, page 23
    • “By transferring such a significant volume of water away from the Han River Basin, the project is depriving the area of the most basic input it will need to develop in the years and decades to come,” said Britt Crow-Miller, a research assistant professor at Portland State University.[…]
    • The Danjiangkou reservoir gets its water from the Han River, a tributary of the Yangtze River which feeds several major cities in central China such as Wuhan, an economic power house in Hubei province sporting a $144 billion GDP.2014 September 9, Stian Reklev, Kathy Chen, “Quenching Beijing's thirst may stunt regional growth”, in Michael Perry, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 27 May 2022, Industry, Materials...

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Han

Han

  1. An ancient Chinese county, viscounty, and kingdom of the Zhou dynasty and the Qin–Han interregnum
  2. The realm of this former state under other rulers
  3. The star Zeta Ophiuchi in traditional Chinese astronomy, named for this state
  4. A surname.
    • In May 2019, former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) proposed adopting the Hanyu Pinyin system for the city's street signs at an estimated cost of NT$73 million (US$2.54 million), though the plan was ultimately delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Han left office after losing a recall vote on...2020 October 14, Wang Shu-fen, Matthew Mazzetta, “Kaohsiung nixes proposal to adopt Hanyu Pinyin street signs”, in Focus Taiwan, archived from the original on 16 Oct 2020, Society

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Han

Han

  1. A former city in Huai'an, Jiangsu, China.
  2. A former state in Jiangsu, China under the Zhou dynasty
  3. A canal in Jiangsu, China, connecting Hancheng (now Yangzhou) on the Yangtze with Mokou (now Huai'an) on the Huai.
    Synonyms:
    Hangou, Han-kou

Proper noun (4) capitalized: Han

Han (plural Hans)

  1. A surname from Korean.

Proper noun (5) capitalized: Han

Han

  1. A First Nations people of Canada and an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group.
    • In the courtroom, with its massive wooden judicial bench, pot-bellied stove and engravings of outdoor scenes and territory notables on the wall, it was easy to visualize the grizzled sourdoughs, the Han Athabaskan Indians from Eagle Village three miles upriver and the back-country trappers waiting...1988 March 20, Mark Olds, “Where the Frontier Spirit Lives On”, in The New York Times (Travel section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 May...
  2. The Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Han people, or Hän Hwëch'in, in Alaska and the Yukon.

Synonyms of han

Forms of han

Noun
alternative formhaan
Proper noun
alternative formHàn
pluralHans
alternative formHahn

Origin of han

From Middle English han, contraction of haven.

From Korean 한(恨) (han), from Middle Chinese 恨 (MC honH).

An early romanization of the Mandarin 漢 /汉 (Hàn), later reinforced by Wade-Giles and pinyin. Originally a river within present-day Shaanxi and Hubei. As a Chinese dynasty, from the founder Liu Bang's short-lived realm in Sichuan and Shaanxi among China's Eighteen Kingdoms, named for the Qin Empire's Hanzhong Commandery, headquartered in a city which also became known as Hanzhong, named for its placement along the middle reaches of the river. The usage for the Chinese ethnicity first appeared during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, claiming the Han dynasty as one of the golden ages of Chinese history.

Words formed from han

Phrases with han

Words that rhyme with han

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about han

What does han mean?
Han means sorrowful resentment, as a part of the Korean cultural identity.
What is han the plural simple present of?
Han is the plural simple present of have.
What part of speech is han?
Han can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce han?
Han is pronounced /hæn/.

Words near han in the dictionary

  1. hamzahs
  2. hamzas
  3. hamzated
  4. Hamzoian
  5. Hamzoians
  6. han
  7. Han blue
  8. Han character
  9. Han characters
  10. Han Chinese
  11. Han Dynasty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: han (page history and authors); Han (page history and authors); have (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-han.wav.

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