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kanji.

The system of writing Japanese using Chinese characters.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkænd͡ʒi//ˈkaːnd͡ʒi/Australia/ˈkɑnd͡ʒi/US
  1. The system of writing Japanese using Chinese characters.

    uncountable
    Japanese is written in a mixture of kanji and kana.
  2. Any individual Chinese character as used in the Japanese language.

    countable · uncountable
    I know about a thousand kanji.
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Japanese 漢字(かんじ) (kanji, “Chinese characters”), from Middle Chinese 漢 (MC xanH, “Han dynasty, China”) + Middle Chinese 字 (MC dziH, “[written] character”) (Compare Korean 한자 (hanja), Mandarin 漢字 /汉字 (hànzì), Vietnamese Hán tự, Hokkien 漢字 /汉字 (hàn-jī / hàn-lī), Cantonese 漢字 /汉字 (hon³ zi⁶)). Doublet of hanja and Hanzi.

noun
  1. A North Indian fermented drink made with beetroot, black mustard seeds, carrots etc.

    uncountable
  2. Drink made from sugarcane vinegar.

    uncountable
  3. Rice gruel made by fermentation of rice and tastes sour.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Hindi कांजी (kāñjī).

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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.