Word.ws English Dictionary

sparrow dominoes

sparrow dominoes noun: the game of mahjong.

Noun

sparrow dominoes

  1. (uncountable) The game of mahjong.
    • Even "Mah-Jongg," for example, is called "sparrow dominoes"—and very rightly, since that is what the Chinese word means to the Chinese.1935, National Council of Teachers of English, Secondary Section, English Journal
  2. (plural, plural-only) The tiles used in this game.
    • There is probably no town in China where the click of the Sparrow dominoes is so little heard.1921, John Dewey, “Impressions from Canton”, in China Monthly Review

Origin of sparrow dominoes

calque of Chinese 麻將 /麻将 (májiàng) + dominoes.

Questions about sparrow dominoes

What does sparrow dominoes mean?
Sparrow dominoes means the game of mahjong.
What part of speech is sparrow dominoes?
Sparrow dominoes is a noun.

Words near sparrow dominoes in the dictionary

  1. sparringly
  2. sparrings
  3. sparrow
  4. Sparrow criterion
  5. Sparrow criterions
  6. sparrow dominoes
  7. sparrow fart
  8. sparrow grass
  9. sparrow hawk
  10. sparrow hawks
  11. sparrow vetch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sparrow dominoes (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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