Word.ws English Dictionary

sharawadgi

Syllables: sha·ra·wad·gi/ˌʃa.ɹəˈwa.dʒi/

sharawadgi noun: a style of landscape gardening or architecture in which rigid lines and symmetry are avoided in favour of an organic appearance.

Noun (1)

sharawadgi (uncountable)

  1. (historical, obsolete) A style of landscape gardening or architecture in which rigid lines and symmetry are avoided in favour of an organic appearance.
    • Among us, the Beauty of Building and Planting is placed chiefly in ſome certain Proportions, Symmetries, or Uniformities; our Walks and our Trees ranged ſo, as to anſwer one another, and at exact Distances. The Chineſes ſcorn this way of Planting, […] their greateſt Reach of Imagination, is...1690, William Temple, “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus; or of Gardening in the Year 1685”, in Miscellanea: In Four Essays. I. Upon Ancient and Modern Learning. II. Upon the Gardens of Epicurus. III....
    • Long before the close of the seventeenth century, there was a fascination with "Sharawadgi" (a word supposedly derived from Chinese), a type of design that accented the wild, the surprising, the irregular.1975, Peter Thorpe, Eighteenth Century English Poetry, Chicago, Ill.: Nelson-Hall, →OCLC, page 113

Noun (2) capitalized: Sharawadgi

Sharawadgi (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of sharawadgi.

Forms of sharawadgi

alternative formSharawadgi
alternative formsharawaggi

Origin of sharawadgi

Possibly from the Japanese shara'aji or share'aji (洒落味、しゃれ味). The word was first published 1690 in a work by English statesman and essayist Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (1628–1699) (see quotation), who claimed it was of Chinese origin, but scholars agree that this is incorrect. Temple following his own enthusiasm for China, took the literary model of introducing "the Chineses" ^([sic]) as his spokesmen.

Questions about sharawadgi

What does sharawadgi mean?
Sharawadgi means a style of landscape gardening or architecture in which rigid lines and symmetry are avoided in favour of an organic appearance.
What part of speech is sharawadgi?
Sharawadgi is a noun.
How do you pronounce sharawadgi?
Sharawadgi is pronounced /ˌʃa.ɹəˈwa.dʒi/ (UK).

Words near sharawadgi in the dictionary

  1. Sharanga
  2. sharara
  3. shararas
  4. sharashka
  5. sharashkas
  6. sharawadgi
  7. sharawaggi
  8. sharbat
  9. sharbats
  10. Sharber
  11. Sharbers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sharawadgi (page history and authors); Sharawadgi (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sharawadgi.wav.

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