Word.ws English Dictionary

sanpaku

sanpaku noun: the presence of visible white space (sclera) above or below the iris of the human eye, traditionally supposed in China and Japan to indicate physical or mental imbalance.

sanpaku: the presence of visible white space (sclera) above or below the iris of the human eye,...
Image: Ju gatsu mikka (^o^) appelez moi Ju, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sanpaku (uncountable)

  1. The presence of visible white space (sclera) above or below the iris of the human eye, traditionally supposed in China and Japan to indicate physical or mental imbalance.
    • A millimeter of white showed beneath each of her pupils. Sanpaku.1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 10

Origin of sanpaku

Borrowed from Japanese 三白 (sanpaku, “three whites”) or 三白眼 (sanpaku gan, “three-white eyes”).

Questions about sanpaku

What does sanpaku mean?
Sanpaku means the presence of visible white space (sclera) above or below the iris of the human eye, traditionally supposed in China and Japan to indicate physical or mental imbalance.
What part of speech is sanpaku?
Sanpaku is a noun.

Words near sanpaku in the dictionary

  1. Sanos
  2. Sanossian
  3. Sanossians
  4. Sanoujam
  5. Sanow
  6. sanpaku
  7. sanpan
  8. sanpans
  9. Sanpedro
  10. Sanpedros
  11. Sanpete County

Source and license

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