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Shanghai.

A major port city and direct-administered municipality of China, the largest urban area in China.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

name/ʃæŋˈhaɪ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈʃæŋ.haɪ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈʃɛŋhaɪ/General-American/ʃaŋˈhaɪ/General-American
  1. A major port city and direct-administered municipality of China, the largest urban area in China.

  2. A major international port including the eastern coast of Shanghai Municipality and the northeastern islands of Zhejiang Province.

Where this word comes from

c. 1840, likely from an English-derived romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Chinese 上海 (Shànghǎi), reinforced by Wade–Giles, Postal Romanization, and Hanyu Pinyin.

noun/ʃæŋˈhaɪ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈʃæŋ.haɪ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈʃɛŋhaɪ/General-American/ʃaŋˈhaɪ/General-American
  1. Alternative letter-case form of shanghai in its various senses derived from the Chinese city.

    alt-of
Where this word comes from

c. 1840, likely from an English-derived romanization of the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Chinese 上海 (Shànghǎi), reinforced by Wade–Giles, Postal Romanization, and Hanyu Pinyin.

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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.