Word.ws English Dictionary

wabi-sabi

/ˈwɑbiˈsɑbi/

wabi-sabi noun: a Japanese aesthetic that derives from imperfection and transience.

Noun

wabi-sabi (uncountable)

  1. A Japanese aesthetic that derives from imperfection and transience.
    • Tai purchased purple flowers in a wabi-sabi pot for Tara.
    • If Dot were to pick an ideology, hers would be wabi-sabi. Her life is full of decay and beauty in imperfection.2021, Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth, William Heinemann, page 265

Origin of wabi-sabi

Borrowed from Japanese わび・さび or 侘び寂び (wabi-sabi)

Questions about wabi-sabi

What does wabi-sabi mean?
Wabi-sabi means a Japanese aesthetic that derives from imperfection and transience.
What part of speech is wabi-sabi?
Wabi-sabi is a noun.
How do you pronounce wabi-sabi?
Wabi-sabi is pronounced /ˈwɑbiˈsɑbi/.

Words near wabi-sabi in the dictionary

  1. wabbly
  2. Wabena
  3. Wabeno
  4. Waberthwaite
  5. wabi
  6. wabi-sabi
  7. wabisabi
  8. Wabnaki
  9. Wabonga
  10. waboom
  11. wabooms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wabi-sabi (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)-Flame, not lame-wabi-sabi.wav.

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