sampan
/ˈsæm.pæn/noun
sampan is a noun meaning “A Chinese flat-bottomed wooden boat propelled by two oars” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-A-M-P-A-N and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of sampan is sampans.
What does sampan mean?
noun
- 1
A Chinese flat-bottomed wooden boat propelled by two oars.
- 2
IndiaAlternative form of jampan.
- 3
Alternative form of tampan (“type of tick”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce sampan?
- /ˈsæm.pæn/
Sampan 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). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-sampan.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of sampan
- sampans plural
- champan
- champana
- champane
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is sampan?
Sampan appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 110,368th 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).
Sampan in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Chinese boat:
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 sampan come from?
From Sinitic, likely Cantonese 三板 (saam¹ baan²) or Hokkien 舢板 (sam-pán).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).