Word.ws English Dictionary

kiai

/kiːˈaɪ/

kiai noun: the short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts.

Noun

kiai (plural kiais or kiai)

  1. The short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts.
    • The kiai is a battle cry to raise your battle spirit. It keeps your body in top shape, in top concentration. Different people have different kiai.2009, Sayem Huq, “Gemori Battousai”, in Bladin: Edge of Blade, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 24

Forms of kiai

pluralkiais
pluralkiai

Origin of kiai

Borrowed from Japanese 気合 (kiai).

Questions about kiai

What does kiai mean?
Kiai means the short yell or shout uttered when performing an attacking move in martial arts.
What part of speech is kiai?
Kiai is a noun.
How do you pronounce kiai?
Kiai is pronounced /kiːˈaɪ/.
What is the plural of kiai?
The plural of kiai is kiais.

Words near kiai in the dictionary

  1. Kiacatoo
  2. kiack
  3. kiacks
  4. Kiacz
  5. Kiah
  6. kiai
  7. kiais
  8. Kialla
  9. Kialla East
  10. Kialla West
  11. kiam chye

Source and license

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