wat
/wat/
wat noun: a Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia, especially those in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Also the alternative spelling of what.
Noun (1)
wat (plural wats)
Noun (2)
wat
- A kind of stew or curry eaten in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
- In Ethiopia, a volcanic pepper and spice seasoning, berbere, is widely used, and the stews called wats are eaten with a spongy flat bread, injera.[1987 July 29, Steven Barboza, “Culinary Delights of Africa Reflect a Continent's Diversity”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Proper noun (1) capitalized: WAT
WAT
- Abbreviation of Waterford.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Wat
Wat
- A medieval English given name, short for Walter or from the Anglo-Saxon name Watt.
Also used as
wat is also the alternative spelling of what.
wat meaning in Tamil, Kannada, Nepali and Malay
wat in Tamil
- வாட்
wat in Kannada
- ವಾಟ್
wat in Nepali
- Buddhist temple
- वाट wāṭ
wat in Malay
- Buddhist temple
- wat
More languagesFewer languages
- wat in Thai
- วัด wát
- wat in Myanmar
- ဝတ်ကျောင်း watkyaung:, ဝက် wak
Examples of wat in a sentence
- Having at last got past the crowd of boats, we advanced rapidly for two hours more, when we stopped at a wat, in order to give the men a rest.1857, Sir John Bowring, The kingdom and people of Siam, volume 1, page 165:
- Aside from its religious function in the community, the wat also performs a large variety of social functions.1982, Carlo Caldarola, Religions and societies, Asia and the Middle East, page 379:
- At its greatest it is always a subordinate element and in most of the wats or temples it hardly appears at all, […]1996, James Bissett Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism and a Buddhist Pilgrimage, page 194:
- It is often possible to discern the motivation or importance of a wat by examining its name1999, Steve Van Beek with Luca Invernizzi, The arts of Thailand, page 15:
Forms of wat
| plural | wats |
|---|
Origin of wat
Borrowed from Thai วัด (wát).
Borrowed from Amharic ወጥ (wäṭ).
Variation of what, used for humorous effect.
Phrases with wat
Words that rhyme with wat
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- mat
- slat
- blat
- matt
- matte
- nat
- pat
- sat
- scat
- sprat
- vat
- old hat
- phat
- plat
- prat
- rabat
- spat
- tat
- @
- acrobat
- anticat
- antifat
- antirat
- batt
- big cat
- Cheshire cat
- clat
- combat
- gat
- glatt
- gnat
- manat
- Montserrat
- plait
- scrat
- skat
- stat
- the fact that
- twat
- whereat
- begat
- Bratt
- BTO flat
- chowkat
- dassie rat
- dat
- despotat
- drat
Questions about wat
- What does wat mean?
- Wat means a Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia, especially those in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
- What is wat in Tamil?
- Wat in Tamil is வாட். See Wat meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use wat in a sentence?
- Having at last got past the crowd of boats, we advanced rapidly for two hours more, when we stopped at a wat, in order to give the men a rest.
- What part of speech is wat?
- Wat can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce wat?
- Wat is pronounced /wat/ (UK).
- What is the plural of wat?
- The plural of wat is wats.
Words near wat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wat (page history and authors); WAT (page history and authors); Wat (page history and authors); wat (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wat (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-wat.wav.
Cite this entry: “wat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.