nisei
/ˈniseɪ/
nisei noun: one whose parents were Japanese immigrants, especially to North or South America.
Noun (1)
nisei (plural niseis or nisei)
- One whose parents were Japanese immigrants, especially to North or South America.
- Born and brought tip mostly in South America, the United States (particularly Hawaii) and Canada, the nisei and sansei have Japanese features but often speak the language imperfectly, if at all.1973 October 4, Robert Trumbull, “Offspring of Japanese Settlers in U.S. Find Japan Frustrating”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2022
- The Nisei, on the other hand, are more inclined to view the hyphenated Japanese Canadian identity with positive implications.1978, Gordon Hirabayashi, “Japanese Heritage, Canadian Experience”, in Harold Coward, Leslie S. Kawamura, editors, Religion and Ethnicity, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, page 66
Noun (2) capitalized: Nisei
Nisei (plural Nisei)
- a person born outside of Japan of parents who were born in Japan
Forms of nisei
| plural | niseis |
|---|---|
| plural | nisei |
| alternative form | nissei |
| plural | Nisei |
Origin of nisei
Borrowed from Japanese 二世 (にせい, nisei), from 二 (ni-, “second”) + 世 (sei, “generation”).
Borrowed from Japanese 二世 (“second generation”).
Questions about nisei
- What does nisei mean?
- Nisei means one whose parents were Japanese immigrants, especially to North or South America.
- What part of speech is nisei?
- Nisei is a noun.
- How do you pronounce nisei?
- Nisei is pronounced /ˈniseɪ/.
- What is the plural of nisei?
- The plural of nisei is niseis.
Words near nisei in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nisei (page history and authors); Nisei (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: “nisei.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nisei. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.