Dictionary

gaijin en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• gīʹjĭnʹ
• /ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/
• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

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”).

Meanings

1. (from the perspective of a Japanese person) A non-Japanese person.
   • 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:
   • [...] 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:
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • 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. (Hawaii) A white person.

Forms

Deriveds

gaijin card

Translations (8)

cmn 外人 ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · hi विदेशी ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · ja 外人 ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · ko 외인 ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · pl gaijinka ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · pl gaijin ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · hi गाईजिन ((Japan) a non-Japanese person) · ru га́йдзин ((Japan) a non-Japanese person)