Word.ws English Dictionary

oiran

/ˈɔɪɹən/

oiran noun: a high-status courtesan in Japan.

Noun

oiran (plural oiran or oirans)

  1. A high-status courtesan in Japan.
    • The oiran of Mitarai was not like the geisha. Like the great eighteenth-century courtesans of Europe, she knew who and what she was and turned wanton provocation into an art.2002, Donald Richie, The Inland Sea, Stone Bridge Press, page 192

Forms of oiran

pluraloiran
pluraloirans

Origin of oiran

From Japanese 花魁, literally ‘flower-leader’.

Questions about oiran

What does oiran mean?
Oiran means a high-status courtesan in Japan.
What part of speech is oiran?
Oiran is a noun.
How do you pronounce oiran?
Oiran is pronounced /ˈɔɪɹən/.
What is the plural of oiran?
The plural of oiran is oiran.

Words near oiran in the dictionary

  1. Oio
  2. oioxenous
  3. oipe
  4. oipes
  5. OIr
  6. oiran
  7. oirans
  8. Oirat
  9. Oirats
  10. Oird
  11. Oirds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oiran (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: “oiran.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oiran. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.