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katakana.

A Japanese syllabary used when writing words borrowed from foreign languages other than Chinese, specific names of plants and animals and other jargon, onomatopoeia, or to emphasize a word or phrase. Also used to write the Ainu language.

8 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˌkætəˈkænə/Canada, UK/ˌkætəˈkɑːnə/US/ˌkɑtəˈkɑːnə/US
  1. A Japanese syllabary used when writing words borrowed from foreign languages other than Chinese, specific names of plants and animals and other jargon, onomatopoeia, or to emphasize a word or phrase. Also used to write the Ainu language.

    uncountable
  2. A character thereof.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Japanese 片(かた)仮(か)名(な) (katakana).

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katakana studiokatakana workshello, katakana

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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.