Word.ws English Dictionary

pinyin

/ˈpɪnjɪn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

India/ˈpinjin/

pinyin is the alternative letter-case form of Pinyin.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Pinyin

Pinyin

  1. A system of romanization for Standard Mandarin, used in the People’s Republic of China, and more recently in other Mandarin Chinese-speaking areas as well.
    • The Chinese government began using the new system Jan. 1 in all its foreign language publications, including the English-language service of the New China News Agency. This is an important source for American journalists writing about China. The United Nations and U.S. government agencies have...
    • The old spelling system, named the Wade-Giles system after the two 19th century Britons who developed it, made correct pronunciation unnecessarily difficult. It used apostrophes to distinguish aspirated consonants, such as p'ai pronounced with a "p" sound, from unaspirated, such as pai pronounced...
    • Reading the alphabetized words still presents problems for the Chinese, however, because the spellings do not distinguish the flur separate tones in the Chinese language that can significantly change meaning. The word "ma" can mean "mother", "horse", or "scold", depending on what tone is used....1979 March 5, Jay Mathews, “China Is China, But Hangchow Is Hangzhou”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Dec 2023
    Synonyms:
    Hanyu Pinyin

Noun capitalized: Pinyin

Pinyin

  1. A phonetic script or romanization system for various languages spoken in the People's Republic of China, e.g. Tibetan
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:Pinyin.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Pinyin

Pinyin

  1. A Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon.

Synonyms of pinyin

Forms of pinyin

alternative formpinyin
alternative formPin-yin
alternative formp'in-yin

Origin of pinyin

20th c., from Mandarin Chinese 拼音 (pīnyīn, literally “spelled sounds”).

Words formed from pinyin

Phrases with pinyin

Questions about pinyin

What does pinyin mean?
Pinyin means a system of romanization for Standard Mandarin, used in the People’s Republic of China, and more recently in other Mandarin Chinese-speaking areas as well.
What is pinyin the alternative letter-case form of?
Pinyin is the alternative letter-case form of Pinyin.
What part of speech is pinyin?
Pinyin can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce pinyin?
Pinyin is pronounced /ˈpɪnjɪn/.

Words near pinyin in the dictionary

  1. Pinxton
  2. Pinxy
  3. Pinxys
  4. piny
  5. Pinyahan
  6. pinyin
  7. pinyinisation
  8. pinyinisations
  9. pinyinise
  10. pinyinised
  11. pinyinises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pinyin (page history and authors); Pinyin (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Pinyin.wav.

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