Ainu
Americannoun
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a member of an aboriginal population of northernmost Japan.
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the language of the Ainu.
noun
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a member of the aboriginal people of Japan, now mostly intermixed with Mongoloid immigrants whose skin colour is more yellowish
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the language of this people, sometimes tentatively associated with Altaic, still spoken in parts of Hokkaido and elsewhere
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Ainu
Ainu: man
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Dr Munro lived and died among the Ainu while studying their culture in northern Japan.
From BBC ● Apr. 30, 2025
PhD student Nathan Sydenham said Dr Munro had "empathised" with the Ainu people and their struggle to preserve their culture.
From BBC ● Apr. 30, 2025
For example, Hitoshi Watanabe focused on ethnographic data about the Ainu, an Indigenous population in northern Japan and its surrounding areas.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 17, 2023
Although Watanabe documented Ainu women hunting, often with the aid of dogs, he dismissed this finding in his interpretations and placed the focus squarely on men as the primary meat winners.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 17, 2023
The Ainu are more nearly the descendants of Japan’s ancient Jomon inhabitants, mixed with Korean genes of Yayoi colonists and of the modern Japanese.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
For Tokyo audiences, the Ainus only pretended to kill the bear and drink his blood.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Bushmen of Australia, the Ainus of Japan and the Dravidians of India have survived from a stock almost as remote.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Hairy Ainus of Japan catch salmon with grizzly bears.
From Time Magazine Archive
His evidence is that the Ainus, unlike any other tribes in northern Asia: > Wear loincloths in summer.
From Time Magazine Archive
See also J. Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, 1892, and the article "Ainus" in Ency. of Religion and Ethics, 1908.
From Man, Past and Present by Haddon, Alfred Court
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
