Word.ws English Dictionary

joss sticks

joss sticks is the plural of joss stick.

Meaning of joss stick

Noun

joss stick (plural joss sticks)

  1. A stick of incense, especially (Taoism, Buddhism, etc.) those burned as an offering before a Chinese shrine.
    • For instance, Hawkins, Lewis, Hankin and Sengupta all cover the word agarbatti, an incense stick or joss stick, but there is no way of knowing when this term was first used in Indian English, nor whether it is now current or obsolete.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 300

Questions about joss sticks

What is joss sticks the plural of?
Joss sticks is the plural of joss stick.

Words near joss sticks in the dictionary

  1. joss house
  2. joss houses
  3. joss paper
  4. joss papers
  5. joss stick
  6. joss sticks
  7. joss-block
  8. joss-blocks
  9. joss-stick
  10. joss-sticks
  11. jossakeed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: joss sticks (page history and authors); joss stick (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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