Word.ws English Dictionary

nan

UK/næn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/nan/

nan noun: synonym of maid: a servant girl. Also the alternative spelling of naan.

Noun (1)

nan (plural nans)

  1. (obsolete) Synonym of maid: a servant girl.
    Synonyms:
    maid
  2. (obsolete, slang) Synonym of nancy: an effeminate male homosexual.
    Synonyms:
    nancy
  3. (UK, endearing) Synonym of nursemaid.
    Synonyms:
    nursemaid
  4. (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, UK, endearing) Synonym of grandmother.
    • We had my nan over for Christmas dinner.
    Synonyms:
    grandmother

Noun (2) capitalized: Nan

Nan

  1. (World War II era, joint US/RAF) radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter N.
    Synonyms:
    November

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Nan

Nan

  1. A diminutive of the female given name Ann and Nancy.
    • My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies, / Finely attired in a robe of white.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Nan

Nan

  1. A province of Thailand.
  2. The capital of Nan Province, Thailand.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: NAN

NAN

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of National Assembly of Nigeria.

Noun (3) capitalized: NAN

NAN

  1. NMDA antagonist neurotoxicity.
  2. (alternative) Alternative form of NaN (not a number)

Noun (4) capitalized: NaN

NaN (countable and uncountable, plural NaNs)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of not a number, applied to numeric values that represent an undefined or unrepresentable value, such as zero divided by itself.

Also used as

nan is also the alternative spelling of naan.

nan meaning in Marathi and Bengali

nan in Marathi

नॅन

nan in Bengali

নান, ন্যান

Examples of nan in a sentence

  • My nan has got dottier and dottier since passing the age of eighty.
  • Nan made a batch of fresh mogs for Christmas—rich with molasses and full of raisins.
  • He ate chicken dopiaza with plain rice and a nan.

All 11 example sentences with nan

Synonyms of nan

Forms of nan

pluralnans
pluralNaNs

Plural of nan: nans

Origin of nan

From Nan, pet form of the formerly very common female given names Anne and Agnes. As a nursemaid and grandmother, a clipping of earlier nana, from nanny under the probable influence of mama, also from Nan. Compare Mary.

See at naan.

Borrowed from Thai น่าน (nâan).

Words formed from nan

Phrases with nan

Words that rhyme with nan

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nan

What does nan mean?
Nan means synonym of maid: a servant girl.
What is nan in Marathi?
Nan in Marathi is नॅन. See Nan meaning in Marathi.
What part of speech is nan?
Nan can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce nan?
Nan is pronounced /næn/ (UK).
What is the plural of nan?
The plural of nan is nans.

Words near nan in the dictionary

  1. Namyangju
  2. Namyats
  3. Namyung
  4. namé
  5. namés
  6. nan
  7. nan flap
  8. nan flaps
  9. Nan Mountains
  10. Nan Yang
  11. Nan'an

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nan (page history and authors); Nan (page history and authors); NAN (page history and authors); NaN (page history and authors); nan (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nan (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-nan.ogg.

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