Word.ws English Dictionary

seppuku

Syllables: sep·pu·ku/sɛˈpuː.kuː/US/ˈsɛ.pu(ˌ)ku/

seppuku noun: a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment using a blade, practiced by Japanese samurai, especially to rid oneself of shame, as a means of protest, or, formerly, as a method of capital punishment.

Noun

seppuku (countable and uncountable, plural seppukus or seppuku)

  1. A form of ritual suicide by disembowelment using a blade, practiced by Japanese samurai, especially to rid oneself of shame, as a means of protest, or, formerly, as a method of capital punishment.
    • I heard that if you hit a vape and then commit seppuku by slashing out your lungs, it'll look like there's a ghost leaving your body.2018 August 22, 01:28 from the start, in CS:GO SURF IN A NUTSHELL (Comedy, Gaming), spoken by RaccoonEggs, YouTube
    • “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” […] At a panel hosted by Globis, a Japanese graduate business school, Dr. Narita told the audience that “if this can become a...2023 February 12, Motoko Rich, Hikari Hida, quoting Yusuke Narita, “A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from...
    Synonyms:
    hara-kiri

seppuku meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Tagalog

seppuku in Hindi

ritual suicide by disembowelment
सेप्पुकू seppukū

seppuku in Marathi

ritual suicide by disembowelment
सेप्पुकु seppuku

seppuku in Urdu

ritual suicide by disembowelment
سیپکو seppukū

seppuku in Tagalog

ritual suicide by disembowelment
seppuku
More languagesFewer languages
seppuku in Arabic
هَارَا كِيرِي hārā kīrī, سِيبُّوكُو sībbūkū
seppuku in Vietnamese
thiết phúc, seppuku

Synonyms of seppuku

Forms of seppuku

pluralseppukus
pluralseppuku

Origin of seppuku

Borrowed from Japanese 切腹 (seppuku), from Middle Chinese 切 (t͡set, “to cut”) + 腹 (pjuwk, “belly”). Compare Cantonese 切腹 (cit³ fuk¹) and Mandarin 切腹 (qiēfù).

Questions about seppuku

What does seppuku mean?
Seppuku means a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment using a blade, practiced by Japanese samurai, especially to rid oneself of shame, as a means of protest, or, formerly, as a method of capital punishment.
What is seppuku in Hindi?
Seppuku in Hindi is सेप्पुकू (seppukū). See Seppuku meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is seppuku?
Seppuku is a noun.
How do you pronounce seppuku?
Seppuku is pronounced /sɛˈpuː.kuː/ (UK).
What is the plural of seppuku?
The plural of seppuku is seppukus.

Words near seppuku in the dictionary

  1. Seppala Siberian Sleddogs
  2. Seppalas
  3. seppo
  4. Seppoland
  5. seppos
  6. seppuku
  7. seppukus
  8. seprase
  9. seproxetine
  10. SEPs
  11. sEPSC

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seppuku (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-seppuku.wav.

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