Word.ws English Dictionary

shantung

Syllables: shan·tung

shantung noun: a type of Chinese silk, originally undyed.

Noun

shantung (countable and uncountable, plural shantungs)

  1. A type of Chinese silk, originally undyed.
    • As she walked, the soft silk of her dress – she wore a blue shantung, full-skirted – blew away from the sea and flapped and clung to her legs.1915, DH Lawrence, The Rainbow, Vintage, published 2011, page 442
    • The yellow beer, the light shantung suit and the gleaming white teeth were all alight with the trembling silver reflections that sprang from the sunlight on the water.1963, H. E. Bates, “Major of Hussars”, in Seven by Five
  2. A fabric of some other material having the same characteristics.

Proper noun capitalized: Shantung

Shantung

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Shandong.
    • The rest of the coast of China northward, as far as this chart is continued, is copied from the Missionary provincial charts, except in the direction of the coast, which is made more westerly, to accord with the situation of the Chantong or Shantung Promontory, at the entrance of the Yellow Sea, as...1816, The Naval Chronicle for 1816, London: Joyce Gold, page 157
    • (4) Ting Pao-cheng, lieut.-governor of Shantung, reports having sacrificed to the Tai Shan (泰山), inspected the Confucian Temple at Chüfow (the native place of Confucius), which has just undergone a thorough repair, and examined the dykes erected to protect the low lands, in the neighbourhood of...1872 July 27, “Abstract of Peking Gazettes”, in North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette, volume IX, number 273, Shanghai, →OCLC, page 69, column 1

Forms of shantung

pluralshantungs

Origin of shantung

From the Wade–Giles romanization of Mandarin 山東／山东 (Shāndōng), Shantung.

From Mandarin 山東／山东 (Shāndōng) cf. Wade-Giles romanization: Shan¹-tung¹.

Words formed from shantung

Questions about shantung

What does shantung mean?
Shantung means a type of Chinese silk, originally undyed.
What part of speech is shantung?
Shantung can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of shantung?
The plural of shantung is shantungs.

Words near shantung in the dictionary

  1. shantih
  2. Shantiniketan
  3. shanto
  4. Shantou
  5. shants
  6. shantung
  7. Shantung Peninsula
  8. Shantungese
  9. shantungs
  10. shanty
  11. shanty back

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shantung (page history and authors); Shantung (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: “shantung.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shantung. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.