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ronin

noun

ronin is a noun meaning “A masterless samurai (who often becomes a mercenary to make ends meet)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-O-N-I-N and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Ronin, the name). The plural of ronin is ronins or rōnins.

What does ronin mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A masterless samurai (who often becomes a mercenary to make ends meet).

  2. 2

    colloquialA student who has failed the entrance examination for the high school or university of their choice: if the student does not wish to take the exam the following year or is unable to, the student becomes a ronin, assuming full responsibility for their own training and survival.

noun

as rōnin
  1. 1

    Alternative spelling of ronin.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce ronin?

    Ronin has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

    Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

    Forms of ronin

    • ronins plural
    • rōnin
    • rōnins plural

    Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

    How common is ronin?

    Ronin appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 38,416th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Ronin, the name.

    Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

    Ronin in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

    In the sense masterless samurai:

    LanguageWords
    Frenchronin
    GermanRonin (Rônin m, Rōnin m)
    Portugueseronin

    Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

    Where does ronin come from?

    From Japanese 浪人 (rōnin), in turn from Middle Chinese 浪人 (MC langH nyin, “dissolute, wasteful, unrestrained + person”).

    Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).