Word.ws English Dictionary

yoi

yoi noun: a preparatory position in karate, with the arms slightly forward, elbows slightly bent, and fists closed.

Noun (1)

yoi (uncountable)

  1. A preparatory position in karate, with the arms slightly forward, elbows slightly bent, and fists closed.
  2. A bass sound found in dubstep music.

Noun (2) capitalized: YOI

YOI (plural YOIs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of young offender institution.
    • Considered by many to be even more dangerous than adult prisons, establishments such as Feltham YOI, west of London, closely replicate the feral violence of custodial institutions in the Victorian age.2020 July 23, Chris Daw, “'A stain on national life': why are we locking up so many children?'”, in The Guardian

Forms of yoi

pluralYOIs

Origin of yoi

Borrowed from Japanese 用意 (yōi, “preparation”).

Questions about yoi

What does yoi mean?
Yoi means a preparatory position in karate, with the arms slightly forward, elbows slightly bent, and fists closed.
What part of speech is yoi?
Yoi is a noun.
What is the plural of yoi?
The plural of yoi is YOIs.

Words near yoi in the dictionary

  1. Yohns
  2. yoho
  3. Yohos
  4. yohourth
  5. yohself
  6. yoi
  7. Yoichi
  8. yoick
  9. yoicked
  10. yoicking
  11. yoicks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yoi (page history and authors); YOI (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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Cite this entry: “yoi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yoi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.