shan
/ʃɑn/
shan adjective: unfair, harsh.
Adjective (1)
shan (comparative more shan, superlative most shan)
Noun capitalized: Shan
Shan (plural Shans or Shan)
- A member of a people living primarily in the Shan State of Myanmar (also known as Burma), and in adjacent areas of China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, with about 6 million people.
- The Thai proper are related to the Shans of Burma, the Siamese of Thailand and the Lao of Indochina. The Chinese segment of the Thai ethnic group is settled in Yünnan Province, where it numbers 580,000. It constitutes the Hsi-shuang-pan-na Autonomous Chou in the southern part of the province and...1956, Theodore Shabad, China's Changing Map: A Political and Economic Geography of The Chinese People's Republic, Frederick A. Praeger, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 42
- Although holding mainly high upland territory in Burma, the Shan themselves live only in the valleys and in stretches of plain. The surrounding hill country is occupied by relatively primitive hill peoples living in economic symbiosis with the Shan, but there is no clear genetic distinction between...1968, “SHAN”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 20, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 344, column 2
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Shan
Shan
- The language of this people, of the Kra-Dai language family.
- A state of Myanmar.
Adjective (2) capitalized: Shan
Shan (not comparable)
- Of or pertaining to the Shan people or the Shan language.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Shan
Shan
- The Shan Pass: a mountain pass in Shanzhou, Henan, through which the Yellow River flows into the North China Plain.
Synonyms of shan
Forms of shan
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more shan |
| superlative | most shan |
| alternative form | shand |
| Noun | |
| plural | Shans |
| plural | Shan |
Origin of shan
Origin obscure. Perhaps from shand (“worthless”). Alternatively, perhaps of Romani origin.
From Burmese ရှမ်း (hram:), from Thai สยาม (sà-yǎam). Doublet of Siam.
From the pinyin romanization of Mandarin 陝／陕 (shǎn).
Words formed from shan
Phrases with shan
- Yu Shan
- Yü Shan
- Fat Shan
- Tai Shan
- Lung Shan
- Ping Shan
- Tian Shan
- Tien Shan
- Ma On Shan
- Tsz Wan Shan
- mao shan wang
- Tai Ping Shan
1 more phrasesFewer phrases
Words that rhyme with shan
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- clan
- ban
- Cheyenne
- Longshan
- Nanshan
- plan
- an
- gan
- Gushan
- han
- Hongshan
- mann
- nan
- stan
- tan
- unman
- Baoshan
- Dongshan
- flan
- Heshan
- Jinshan
- langshan
- marzipan
- panne
- Qishan
- ran
- rattan
- bantustan
- began
- chan
- Fengshan
- Fran
- Guanshan
- Hengshan
- Huangshan
- Huishan
- japan
- Lausanne
- Lianshan
- Lushan
- Marianne
- Pingshan
- scran
- sedan
- than
- trapan
- trepan
- Xi'an
Questions about shan
- What does shan mean?
- Shan means unfair, harsh.
- What part of speech is shan?
- Shan can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce shan?
- Shan is pronounced /ʃɑn/.
Words near shan in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shan (page history and authors); Shan (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-Shan.wav.
Cite this entry: “shan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.