Meanings
- datedpluralplural onlyrareChinese people.
In Chinatown, the scene is animated, colorful and noisy, full of ordinary housewives and children and a host of quaint, quite extraordinary old Chinafolk.
1969, Qantas Airways Australia, volumes 35–36, Sydney, N.S.W.: Qantas Airways Limited, →OCLC, page 82 more examples
Of course the first thing that struck us were the queer wheelbarrows used by the native population in place of the jinrikishas adopted from Japan for the Europeans. They are a cross between a huge wheelbarrow and a jaunting car; they have a division up the centre like the latter, and sometimes you will see a whole family of Chinafolk on the two sides.
1895, Douglas Sladen, “Shanghai”, in The Japs at Home. Fifth Edition: To Which Are Added for the First Time Some Bits of China. […], London; New York, N.Y.; Melbourne, Vic.: Ward, Lock & Bowden, […], →OCLC, “Bits of China” section, page 284When reports were first current (Time, Feb. 6 et seq.) that 12,000,000 Chinese seem likely to die of famine before next Spring, most citizens of the U. S. confidently left the whole ghastly and appalling problem to the Red Cross. If they thought about it at all, they saw in their minds’ eye long lines of Chinafolk, gratefully receiving huge bowls of steaming soup from white clad, starry-eyed young Red Cross nurses.
1928 December 10, “China: Sure to Die”, in Briton Hadden, Henry R[obinson] Luce, editors, Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine, volume XII, number 24, Chicago, Ill.: Time, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, “Foreign News” section, page 24, column 2
Origin
From China + folk, likely after Chinaman.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Chinafolk. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chinafolk
“Chinafolk.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chinafolk. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Chinafolk,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Chinafolk.
Source: Chinafolk on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.