gaijin

G2A1I1J8I1N1
/ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/

noun

A non-Japanese person.

UncommonScrabble 14

Meanings

noungaijin (plural gaijin or gaijins)

plural gaijins

  1. A non-Japanese person.

    [...] I was placed in the gaijins' dormitory area up on the third floor.

    2004, Troy Anderson, The Way of Go, Simon and Schuster, page 149
    5 more examples

    The peculiar position of his group, according to Mr. Okimoto, is shown by the Japanese habit of referring to such persons as either nisei or nikkeijin —of Japanese descent—instead of calling them gaijin, that is, foreigners, or identifying them by nationality.

    1973 October 4, Robert Trumbull, “Offspring of Japanese Settlers in U.S. Find Japan Frustrating”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2022

    For a while he began to speak Japanese, rather slangy, never having seemed to learn it — karoshi for death from overwork, yakitaori-ya for eatery, and gaijin for clumsy foreigner.

    1976, Bill Henderson, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Pushcart Press, page 207

    The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd was a gaijin crowd.

    1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 10

    And I did not intend to live my life as a gaijin—not merely, like the expatriate, someone by definition permanently out of place but someone unwanted as well.

    1992, David Pollack, Reading Against Culture, Cornell Press, page 230

    Oh's pitchers later acknowledged that they were instructed—under penalty of a fine—to throw no strikes to the gaijin.

    2006, Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball, page 127
  2. HawaiiA white person.

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

  1. Old Chinese外人“foreigner, outsider” < “non-relative”
  2. Middle Chinese外人
  3. Japanese外人“foreigner”
  4. Englishgaijin

Borrowed from Japanese 外人 (gaijin, “foreigner”), from Middle Chinese 外人 (ngwajᴴ nyin). Compare Mandarin 外人 (wàirén), from Old Chinese 外人 (*ŋʷaːds njin, “foreigner, outsider” < “non-relative”), from 外 (wài, “outside, outer”) + 人 (rén, “person”).

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Chinese Mandarin 外人
  • 外人 (wàirén)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Hindi गाईजिन, विदेशी
  • गाईजिन (gāījin)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
  • विदेशी (videśī)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Japanese 外人
  • 外人 (gaijin)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Korean 외인
  • 외인 (oein)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Polish gaijin, gaijinka
  • gaijin(Japan) a non-Japanese person
  • gaijinka(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Russian га́йдзин
  • га́йдзин (gájdzin)(Japan) a non-Japanese person
Cite this entry
APA

gaijin. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin

MLA

“gaijin.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gaijin,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin.

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