gaijin

See also: gǎijìn

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 外人 (gaijin, “foreigner”), from Middle Chinese 外人 (ngwaj^H nyin). Compare Mandarin 外人 (wàirén), from Old Chinese 外人 (*ŋʷaːds njin, “foreigner, outsider” < “non-relative”), from 外 (wài, “outside, outer”) + 人 (rén, “person”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: gīʹjĭnʹ
• IPA^(key): /ˈɡaɪˌd͡ʒɪn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

gaijin (plural gaijin or gaijins)

1. (from the perspective of a Japanese person) A non-Japanese person.
   • 1973 October 4, Robert Trumbull, “Offspring of Japanese Settlers in U.S. Find Japan Frustrating”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 17 February 2022:

     The peculiar position of his group, according to Mr. Okimoto, is shown by the Japanese habit of referring to such persons as either nisei or nikkeijin —of Japanese descent—instead of calling them gaijin, that is, foreigners, or identifying them by nationality.

   • 1976, Bill Henderson, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Pushcart Press, page 207:

     For a while he began to speak Japanese, rather slangy, never having seemed to learn it — karoshi for death from overwork, yakitaori-ya for eatery, and gaijin for clumsy foreigner.

   • 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 10:

     The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd was a gaijin crowd.

   • 1992, David Pollack, Reading Against Culture, Cornell Press, page 230:

     And I did not intend to live my life as a gaijin—not merely, like the expatriate, someone by definition permanently out of place but someone unwanted as well.

   • 2004, Troy Anderson, The Way of Go, Simon and Schuster, page 149:

     [...] I was placed in the gaijins' dormitory area up on the third floor.

   • 2006, Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball, page 127:

     Oh's pitchers later acknowledged that they were instructed—under penalty of a fine—to throw no strikes to the gaijin.

2. (Hawaii) A white person.

Derived terms

• gaijin card

Translations

(Japan) a non-Japanese person

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 外人 (zh) (wàirén)

• Japanese: 外人 (ja) (がいじん, gaijin)
• Korean: 외인 (oein)
• Polish: gaijin (pl) m, gaijinka f
• Russian: га́йдзин m (gájdzin)

Japanese

Romanization

gaijin

1. Rōmaji transcription of がいじん