Chinese

How to spell chinese

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chinese

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chinese mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to China, its people, its language, or its culture.
2. nounThe languages spoken in China, or the people of China collectively.

Chinese in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum displayed several chinese porcelain bowls from the Ming era.

• noun

  He spent two years learning chinese before moving to Beijing.

• adjective

  She signed up for an evening course in chinese cooking.

• noun

  The menu was printed in both English and chinese.

Where does chinese come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is formed from the place name China plus the suffix -ese, which English uses to mark nationality, language, or origin, as in Japanese and Portuguese. The name China itself is widely traced to the Qin dynasty, the short-lived but unifying empire of the third century before the common era; the dynasty's name passed into Sanskrit as Cina, then into Persian and Arabic, and reached Europe through trade routes. Portuguese and Italian travellers carried the form into the western languages during the 1500s, and English settled on China for the land and Chinese for its people, language, and products. The suffix -ese descends from the Latin -ensis, meaning 'belonging to' or 'originating from', which travelled into English through Old French. Because the -ese ending sounds like a plain 'eez' yet hides a silent reasoning, writers occasionally fumble the vowel order, but the spelling stays regular: China simply loses its final 'a' and gains '-ese'.

How the word is built

• chin- (from China, the country)
• -ese (suffix forming adjectives and nouns of national origin)