Word.ws English Dictionary

sanshin

sanshin noun: a three-stringed instrument of Okinawan origin, the precursor to the shamisen.

sanshin: a three-stringed instrument of Okinawan origin, the precursor to the shamisen
Image: TimDuncan, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sanshin (plural sanshins)

  1. A three-stringed instrument of Okinawan origin, the precursor to the shamisen.

Forms of sanshin

pluralsanshins

Origin of sanshin

Borrowed from Japanese 三線 (sanshin) or Okinawan 三線 (sanshin, literally “three strings”). Doublet of sanxian.

Questions about sanshin

What does sanshin mean?
Sanshin means a three-stringed instrument of Okinawan origin, the precursor to the shamisen.
What part of speech is sanshin?
Sanshin is a noun.
What is the plural of sanshin?
The plural of sanshin is sanshins.

Words near sanshin in the dictionary

  1. sanserif
  2. sanserifs
  3. sansevieria
  4. sansevierias
  5. Sansha
  6. sanshin
  7. sanshins
  8. sansho
  9. sanshool
  10. sanshools
  11. Sanshou

Source and license

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