Word.ws English Dictionary

kobans

kobans is the plural of koban.

Meaning of koban

Noun (1)

koban (plural koban or kobans)

  1. An oval gold coin in the Edo period of feudal Japan.
    • Every landlord hath two koban paid him for dinner, and three for supper and lodgings at night.1906, Ernest W[ilson] Clement, editor, Hildreth’s “Japan as it Was and Is”: A Handbook of Old Japan, volume II, Chicago, Ill.: A. C. McClurg & Co., page 40

Noun (2)

koban (plural koban or kobans)

  1. A small community police office or a police box, especially one in Japan.
    • Personnel of kobans change each shift; they report for duty at a police station and fan out to the kobans.1976, David H. Bayley, Forces of Order: Police Behavior in Japan and the United States, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, published 1978, →ISBN, page 13

Questions about kobans

What is kobans the plural of?
Kobans is the plural of koban.

Words near kobans in the dictionary

  1. kobalt
  2. koban
  3. Kobane
  4. kobang
  5. kobangs
  6. kobans
  7. Kobanê
  8. Kobanî
  9. Kobarid
  10. kobas
  11. Kobashigawa

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kobans (page history and authors); koban (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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