Meanings
plural gaijins
- 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 1495 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 2022For 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 207The 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 10And 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 230Oh'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 - HawaiiA white person.
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
- Old Chinese外人“foreigner, outsider” < “non-relative”
- Middle Chinese外人
- Japanese外人“foreigner”
- 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”).
More words from Japanese, Middle Chinese, Old Chinese
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
gaijin. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin
“gaijin.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gaijin,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gaijin.
Source: gaijin on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.