Word.ws English Dictionary

komainu

komainu noun: carved stone statues of stylized lions that guard the entrance to some Japanese temples or shrines.

komainu: carved stone statues of stylized lions that guard the entrance to some Japanese temples or shrines
Image: Reggaeman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

komainu (plural komainu or komainus)

  1. Carved stone statues of stylized lions that guard the entrance to some Japanese temples or shrines.
    • The Buddhist priest Ryōtei declares that the komainu are lions, which came from Koma and were called dogs by Japanese because they did not know lions.1909, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, page 60
    • The komainu can be traced to India and that culture’s stylized representations of the lion.2015, Stan Sakai, The Usagi Yojimbo Saga. Volume 4, page 577
    Synonyms:
    foo dog

Synonyms of komainu

Forms of komainu

pluralkomainu
pluralkomainus

Origin of komainu

From Japanese 狛犬 (komainu, “lion-dog”).

Questions about komainu

What does komainu mean?
Komainu means carved stone statues of stylized lions that guard the entrance to some Japanese temples or shrines.
What part of speech is komainu?
Komainu is a noun.
What is the plural of komainu?
The plural of komainu is komainu.

Words near komainu in the dictionary

  1. komabue
  2. komabues
  3. komadai
  4. Komae
  5. Komagome
  6. komainu
  7. Komaki
  8. Komal
  9. Koman
  10. Komandoo
  11. Komar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: komainu (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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