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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

Dai.

A diminutive of the male given name David, from Welsh.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

name/daɪ/
  1. A diminutive of the male given name David, from Welsh.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Welsh Dai.

noun/daɪ/
  1. An ethnic group of China, one of the 55 officially recognized minorities.

  2. A member of the ethnic group.

Where this word comes from

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 傣 (Dǎi), borrowed from a Tai language. Doublet of Tai and Thai. Compare Thai ไท (tai).

name/daɪ/
  1. A small northern state of ancient China.

    historical
  2. Various other kingdoms and princely appenages of imperial China named for the ancient state.

    historical
  3. A prefecture of Shanxi under imperial China.

    historical
  4. A county of Xinzhou Prefecture in Shanxi, China.

Where this word comes from

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 代 (Dài), likely from a presinitic name for the area or its people.

name/daɪ/
  1. A surname.

Where this word comes from

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 戴 (Dài).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.