sheng
/ˈʃʌŋ/
sheng noun: a Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recently, wood or chrome-plated brass).
Noun
sheng (plural shengs)
- A Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recently, wood or chrome-plated brass).
- The appearance of a sheng in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century inspired the development of free reed instruments in Western Europe, including the harmonica, accordion, and symphonium (see next page).2015, J. Kenneth Moore, Jayson Kerr Dobney, E Bradley Strachen-Scherer, Musical Instruments: Highlights of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, →ISBN, page 120
Proper noun capitalized: Sheng
Sheng
- A Kenyan cant based on Swahili and English.
- English and Kiswahili might be Kenya’s official languages, but pupils tumbling out of school and students in the university canteens chatter to each other in Sheng, to their teachers’ despair. A witty, cheeky, freewheeling Clockwork Orange-style brew of Kiswahili, English and indigenous Kenyan...2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower
Forms of sheng
| plural | shengs |
|---|
Origin of sheng
From Mandarin 笙 (shēng).
Blend of Swahili + English.
Phrases with sheng
Words that rhyme with sheng
Questions about sheng
- What does sheng mean?
- Sheng means a Chinese wind instrument, a free-reed mouth organ consisting of 13 or more bamboo pipes of various lengths, which are fixed at their bases in a wind chest made from a dried gourd (or, more recently, wood or chrome-plated brass).
- What part of speech is sheng?
- Sheng can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce sheng?
- Sheng is pronounced /ˈʃʌŋ/.
- What is the plural of sheng?
- The plural of sheng is shengs.
Words near sheng in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sheng (page history and authors); Sheng (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-sheng.wav.
Cite this entry: “sheng.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sheng. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.