tanka

tanka noun: a form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae. Also the alternative form of thangka.

Noun (1)

tanka (plural tankas or tanka)

A form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae.
- Like haiku, tanka is a short, classical verse form that has attracted considerable attention in this century.1996, Makoto Ueda, Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, →ISBN
- One tanka poet who directly influenced Kenji is Ishikawa takuboku, who lineated tanka—an extraordinary break with the tradition of writing tanka in one line.2007, Hiroaki Sato, Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, page 38

tanka (plural tankas or tanka)

A kind of boat used in Guangdong, about 25 feet long and often rowed by Tanka women; junk.
- Immediately on our nearing the harbour, a race took place among the amphibious damsels that inhabit the numerous sampans, tanka or egg-boats, which always lie within a short distance of the shore.1837, Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the eastern courts of CochinChina, Siam and Muscat
- The tanka is a small boat, almost as wide as long, and differing therein much from the sharp and narrow canoes of the Malays. The crew generally consists of an elderly woman, who sits or stands at the stern, rotating with a vigorous and experienced arm the long oar which is the great propeller of...1866, William Ainsworth, All Around the World

tanka (plural tankas)

(historical) A coin and unit of currency of varying value, formerly used in parts of India and Central Asia.
- In Uzbek Turan Shah Rukh's tanka remained the standard silver coin and weighed an average of slightly more than 5 g throughout the sixteenth century.1994, Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750, page 29
- The last of the gifts was fifteen horses with velvet and jewelled trappings and one hundred thousand tankas in cash.1997, Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold, HarperCollins, published 2013, page 42

Tanka (plural Tankas or Tanka)

A member of a group of people in southern China who traditionally live on junks.

tanka is also the alternative form of thangka.

tanka is also the alternative form of Tanka.

The notion of rhyming in Japanese tanka poetry is applied differently from what we observe in the Western poetry tradition.2016, Noriko Iwasaki, Peter Sells, Kimi Akita, The Grammar of Japanese Mimetics, page 121:
The tanka is a small boat, almost as wide as long, and differing therein much from the sharp and narrow canoes of the Malays.1866, William Ainsworth, All Around the World:
These craft, the tanka, were the homes of thousands of true seamen — people who rarely came ashore ;1967, Stan Hugill, Sailortown, page 56:

From Japanese 短歌 (tanka, “short song”), from Middle Chinese 短 (MC twanX) 歌 (MC ka) (compare Mandarin 短歌 (duǎngē) duǎngē).

See thangka.

See Tanka.

What does tanka mean?: Tanka means a form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae.
How do you use tanka in a sentence?: The notion of rhyming in Japanese tanka poetry is applied differently from what we observe in the Western poetry tradition.
What part of speech is tanka?: Tanka is a noun.
What is the plural of tanka?: The plural of tanka is tankas.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tanka (page history and authors); Tanka (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “tanka.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tanka. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.