binom

B3I1N1O1M3

noun

A compound word.

Scrabble 9

Meanings

nounbinom (plural binoms)

plural binoms

  1. human sciencesA compound word.

    The prototypical Sino-Japanese word is a binom, that is, a word written with two kanji, each kanji representing a Sino-Japanese morph. It is not difficult to find examples of rendaku affecting Sino-Japanese binoms, and a few are listed in (23).

    2015, Haruo Kubozono, Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology, →ISBN, page 419
    2 more examples

    Where you would expect to hear AN na N you may instead find, especially in written Japanese, AN no N. The latter, somewhat stiffer, version appears to enjoy particular favor when the AN is a binom of Chinese origin modifying another Chinese binom and the two words are either optionally combinable into a compound noun (by dropping the copula nó/ná together with its juncture and applying the proper accentuation) or look as if they might easily so combine.

    1975, Samuel Elmo Martin, A Reference Grammar of Japanese; republished Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2004, →ISBN, page 766

    It a meaning is expressed in a particular language like English with the help of a binom, newspaper, and in another particular language like German by a mononom Zeitung, the heteronomic morphology is usually more voluminous (9 phonograms against 7).

    2013, P. Kümmel, Formalization of Natural Languages, →ISBN

Origin

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

binom. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/binom

MLA

“binom.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/binom. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “binom,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/binom.

Source: binom on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.