gaijin
/ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/noun
gaijin is a noun meaning “A non-Japanese person” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-A-I-J-I-N, and it appears about once in every 6 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of gaijin is gaijins.
What does gaijin mean?
noun
- 1
A non-Japanese person.
- 2
A white person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce gaijin?
- /ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-gaijin.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of gaijin
- gaijins plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is gaijin?
Gaijin appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 75,877th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does gaijin come from?
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”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).