Word.ws English Dictionary

kōhai

kōhai is the alternative spelling of kohai.

Meaning of kohai

Noun

kohai (plural kohais or kohai)

  1. A junior member of a group in Japanese arts; mentee.
    • Juniors may forget their obligation to be in turn good seniors. Seniors may demand too much of their juniors. Some kohai are ungrateful. The system of interrelationship, however, continues to follow the form set by the ideal of unselfish sympathy and involvement.1974, Thomas P. Rohlen, For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-Collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 125
  2. (slang) An underclassman or younger student.

Forms of kōhai

pluralkōhais
pluralkōhai

Questions about kōhai

What is kōhai the alternative spelling of?
Kōhai is the alternative spelling of kohai.

Words near kōhai in the dictionary

  1. kōan
  2. kōans
  3. Kōbe
  4. Kōchi
  5. Kōfu
  6. kōhai
  7. kōhais
  8. Kōnan
  9. Kōtō
  10. Kőbánya
  11. Kŭrdzhali

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kōhai (page history and authors); kohai (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: “kōhai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/k%C5%8Dhai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.