Word.ws English Dictionary

ruan

ruan noun: a Chinese long-necked fretted round-bodied plucked lute which has, since the mid-20th century, been produced in a family of five sizes (from low to high).

Noun

ruan (plural ruans)

  1. A Chinese long-necked fretted round-bodied plucked lute which has, since the mid-20th century, been produced in a family of five sizes (from low to high).
    Synonyms:
    ruanqin

Proper noun capitalized: Ruan

Ruan

  1. A village between Ennis and Corofin, County Clare, Ireland.
  2. A village and commune in Loiret department, Centre-Val de Loire, France.
  3. A surname.
  4. A male given name.

Synonyms of ruan

Forms of ruan

pluralruans

Origin of ruan

Borrowed from Mandarin 阮 (short for 阮咸, ruǎnxián).

Questions about ruan

What does ruan mean?
Ruan means a Chinese long-necked fretted round-bodied plucked lute which has, since the mid-20th century, been produced in a family of five sizes (from low to high).
What part of speech is ruan?
Ruan can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of ruan?
The plural of ruan is ruans.

Words near ruan in the dictionary

  1. Ruacho
  2. Ruachos
  3. ruaille buaille
  4. Ruairi
  5. ruakh
  6. ruan
  7. ruana
  8. ruanas
  9. Ruanda
  10. Ruanda-Urundi
  11. Ruando-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruan (page history and authors); Ruan (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:

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