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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

laowai.

A foreigner in mainland China or Taiwan, (particularly) a Western one.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/laʊˈwaɪ/
  1. A foreigner in mainland China or Taiwan, (particularly) a Western one.

    colloquial
Where this word comes from

From Mandarin 老外 (lǎowài, literally “old outside[r]”).

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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.