Ninja

How to spell ninja

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ninja

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ninja mean?

1. nounA trained agent or warrior of feudal Japan skilled in stealth, espionage, and unarmed combat; by extension, any person exceptionally skilled at something.

Ninja in a sentence

• The film featured a ninja slipping silently across the rooftops.

• My colleague is a spreadsheet ninja who finishes the reports in minutes.

Where does ninja come from?

Language of origin: Japanese

This word comes directly from Japanese ninja (忍者), which combines nin, meaning 'to endure', 'to hide', or 'to conceal', with ja (sha), meaning 'person'. The first character, nin, is itself written with elements suggesting a blade held over the heart, evoking the idea of patient self-control under pressure. Historically the ninja were covert agents of feudal Japan, trained in espionage, sabotage, and unconventional warfare, in contrast to the openly honourable samurai. English borrowed the term in the twentieth century, gaining popularity through martial-arts films and pop culture from roughly the 1960s onward. Because the spelling follows the regular Romanisation of the Japanese sounds, the trickiest part for English writers is simply remembering the silent-looking sequence of n, i, n, j, a without inserting extra letters.

How the word is built

• nin (to endure, conceal)
• ja (person), from Japanese 忍者