Word.ws English Dictionary

mai

/maɪ/

mai is the alternative form of my.

Meaning of my

Determiner

my

  1. Belonging to me.
    • I can't find my book.
  2. Associated with me.
    • My seat at the restaurant was uncomfortable.
  3. Related to me.
    • My parents won't let me go out tonight.
  4. In the possession of me.
    • I have to take my books back to the library soon.

See all 5 meanings of my

Noun capitalized: MAI

MAI

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare infection.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of machine augmented intelligence.

Proper noun capitalized: Mai

Mai

  1. A female given name, a rare spelling variant of Mae/May, or borrowed from Scandinavia, with the same ultimate origin.
  2. A surname from Chinese of Chinese or German origin.

Origin of mai

Orthographic borrowing from the romanized form of Japanese マイ (mai), in turn a borrowing from English my, which it is treated as an alternate form of.

Chinese surname with several origins: * from Mandarin 麥 /麦 (“wheat”), * from Mandarin and Cantonese 買 /买 (maai⁵, “buy”) * Cantonese form of 米 (see Mi). * Romanized from 马 (mǎ) (see Ma) * Romanized from 梅 (méi) (see Mei) As a German surname, variant of May.

Phrases with mai

Questions about mai

What does mai mean?
Mai means a female given name, a rare spelling variant of Mae/May, or borrowed from Scandinavia, with the same ultimate origin.
What is mai the alternative form of?
Mai is the alternative form of my.
What part of speech is mai?
Mai can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mai?
Mai is pronounced /maɪ/.

Words near mai in the dictionary

  1. mahābhārata
  2. Mahākāla
  3. Mahāmāyūrī
  4. Mahāpratisarā
  5. Mahāsthāmaprāpta
  6. mai
  7. mai fun
  8. mai tai
  9. mai tais
  10. mai tu liao
  11. mai-baap

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mai (page history and authors); MAI (page history and authors); Mai (page history and authors); my (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-mai.wav.

Cite this entry: “mai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.