Word.ws English Dictionary

tanuki

Syllables: ta·nukiUK/təˈnʊkɪ/US/tɑˈnuki/

tanuki noun: a raccoon dog, Nyctereutes viverrinus.

Noun

tanuki (plural tanuki or tanukis)

  1. A raccoon dog, Nyctereutes viverrinus.
    • At my onboarding, I was told that one of GitHub's employees identified as a tanuki, a Japanese raccoon dog—this was fine.2023 May 28, Nadia Asparouhova, “Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture”, in Wired, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    mangut
  2. (Japanese) A folkloric figure in the form of a tanuki, regarded as a shapeshifter and renowned for its enormous scrotum and testicles.
  3. The joining of a living bonsai tree to a piece of dead wood for aesthetic effect.

Synonyms of tanuki

Forms of tanuki

pluraltanuki
pluraltanukis
alternative formtanooki

Plural of tanuki: tanuki or tanukis

Origin of tanuki

Borrowed from Japanese 狸(たぬき) (tanuki, “raccoon dog”).

Words that rhyme with tanuki

Questions about tanuki

What does tanuki mean?
Tanuki means a raccoon dog, Nyctereutes viverrinus.
What part of speech is tanuki?
Tanuki is a noun.
How do you pronounce tanuki?
Tanuki is pronounced /təˈnʊkɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of tanuki?
The plural of tanuki is tanuki.

Words near tanuki in the dictionary

  1. tantōs
  2. TANU
  3. Tanudan
  4. Tanuj
  5. Tanuja
  6. tanuki
  7. tanukis
  8. Tanulong
  9. Tanvi
  10. tanvin
  11. tanwall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tanuki (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:

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