Ainu
Americannoun
-
a member of an aboriginal population of northernmost Japan.
-
the language of the Ainu.
noun
-
a member of the aboriginal people of Japan, now mostly intermixed with Mongoloid immigrants whose skin colour is more yellowish
-
the language of this people, sometimes tentatively associated with Altaic, still spoken in parts of Hokkaido and elsewhere
Other Word 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.
Mr Sydenham said Dr Munro's fourth and final wife was a Japanese national who helped him in his understanding of the Ainu culture.
From BBC • Apr. 30, 2025
In 2001, Japanese senator Kayano Shigeru – the first of Ainu origin to be elected – visited the Munro clan in Scotland and issued a posthumous thanks for Dr Munro's support of the Ainu people.
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
She did not think of Japan as the land of Ainu, but rather as the land of her parents and the land where Lynn and I would eventually get sent to learn our femininity.
From "Kira-Kira" by Cynthia Kadohata
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.
