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haiku.

A Japanese poem in three lines, the first and last consisting of five morae, and the second consisting of seven morae, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhaɪkuː/UK/haɪˈku/US/ˈhaɪku/US
  1. A Japanese poem in three lines, the first and last consisting of five morae, and the second consisting of seven morae, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

  2. A three-line poem in any language, with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven syllables in the second, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Japanese 俳(はい)句(く) (haiku), from Middle Chinese 俳 (beaj, “paralleled [writing]”) + 句 (kɨoᴴ, “line”).

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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.