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• gi
  gi

  noun

  a lightweight, two-piece, usually white garment worn by barefooted martial-arts participants, consisting of loose-fitting pants and a wraparound jacket with cloth belt.
• Gi
  Gi

  gilbert; gilberts.
• GI
  GI

  noun

  a member or former member of the U.S. armed forces, especially an enlisted soldier.
• gi.
  gi.

  abbreviation

  gill; gills.
• G.I.
  G.I.

  abbreviation

  galvanized iron.

gi

¹ American  

[gee] / gi /

Or gie

noun

1. a lightweight, two-piece, usually white garment worn by barefooted martial-arts participants, consisting of loose-fitting pants and a wraparound jacket with cloth belt.

---

Gi ² American  

1. gilbert; gilberts.

---

GI ³ American  

[jee-ahy] / ˈdʒiˈaɪ /

Or G.I.

noun

• GI's,
  plural
• GIs
  plural

1. a member or former member of the U.S. armed forces, especially an enlisted soldier.

---

adjective

1. rigidly adhering to military regulations and practices; regimented; spit-and-polish.

   a platoon leader who tried to be more GI than anyone else.

2. of a standardized style or type issued by the U.S. armed forces.

   GI shoes; GI blankets.

3. conforming to the regulations or practices of the U.S. armed forces.

   Every recruit must get a GI haircut.

4. of, relating to, or characteristic of a U.S. enlisted person.

   a typical peacetime GI complaint.

verb (used with object)

GI'd, GI'ing

1. to clean in preparation for inspection.

   to GI the barracks.

verb (used without object)

GI'd, GI'ing

1. to follow military regulations and customs closely; shape up.

   You'd better learn to GI if you want to be promoted.

gi. ⁴ American  

abbreviation

1. gill; gills.

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G.I. ⁵ American  

Also g.i.

abbreviation

1. galvanized iron.

2. gastrointestinal.

3. general issue.

4. government issue.

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GI ¹ British  

noun

1. a soldier in the US Army, esp an enlisted man

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adjective

1. conforming to US Army regulations; of standard government issue

GI ² British  

abbreviation

1. gastrointestinal

2. glycaemic index

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Gi ³ British  

abbreviation

1. gilbert

---

gi ⁴ British  

/ ɡiː /

noun

1. a loose-fitting white suit worn in judo, karate, and other martial arts

   a karate gi

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gi ⁵ British  

abbreviation

1. Gibraltar

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• GI's
  plural
• GIs
  plural

Etymology

Origin of gi¹

1970–75; shortening of Japanese jūdō-gi jujitsu garb, equivalent to jūdō judo + -gi, combining form of ki to wear

Origin of GI³

1915–20; originally abbreviation of galvanized iron, used in U.S. Army bookkeeping in entering articles (e.g., trash cans) made of it; later extended to all articles issued (as an assumed abbreviation of government issue ) and finally to soldiers themselves

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gi Gi GI gi. G.I. GI's GIs

Photos from the event show Hardy donning a blue gi, wearing a blue belt, the second adult rank in jiu-jitsu, which often requires hundreds of hours of training to achieve.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2022

Many followed his mother's request to attend the ceremony wearing a gi, the uniform worn in Jiu-Jitsu.

From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2022

Karate, another first on the Olympics calendar, felt ground-breaking for a similar reason, with men and women wearing the sport’s classic gi.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2021

Mr. Morera likes the subversive idea of taking a uniform made specifically for one activity — a gi for martial arts — and adapting it to another.

From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2020

“Madu! Is this you? O gi di ife a?”

From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My Gi profile requires I answer questions about my kid.

From Slate ● May 10, 2026

As well as community service, the rapper has been ordered to stay away from the victims, identified as Jade and Baddie Gi, for three years.

From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2022

Two-way athlete Petelo Gi is a key player for Serra.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2021

Friends and family took to the Internet shorty after Kobe and Gi Gi passed to celebrate how much he loved his daughters, and fans soon followed with their own.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2021

Gi denotes plurality and follows the noun: na mwane gi the males.

From Grammar and Vocabulary of the Lau Language, Solomon Islands by W. G. (Walter George) Ivens

That helps isolate the specific impacts of the GI Bill, the landmark 1944 law that effectively provided free college to millions of returning U.S. servicemen.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 18, 2026

The GI generation, the cohort that became the core of the postwar middlebrow phenomenon, would not have made that mistake.

From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2026

If those numbers are borne out in the real world, most people on GLP-1s may have some kind of undesirable GI effect from them.

From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2026

The researchers believe these two functions help shield the GI tract from infection.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 16, 2026

There were also demographic forces at work, beginning with the GI Bill, which sent a pioneering generation of evangelicals to college.

From "Class Matters" by The New York Times

“But I remember not even lasting long enough to get a gi. And I don’t think John and Hayden even made it that far.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2022

“Your life belongs to you and you alone, soso gi. You will go back on Saturday. Let me hurry up and make some abacha for you to take.”

From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Cigarroa, 28, could have tapped his G.I. benefits, which cover up to $30,000 in tuition and fees for veterans, but he wants to save those for his 3-year-old daughter to use someday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026

Universities were filled with veterans on the G.I.

From Salon ● Apr. 6, 2025

It's been stopped in its tracks by a type of vortex first described in the 1920s by a brilliant physicist, Sir G.I.

From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2024

It would not be inaccurate to call “Americans in Paris” an advertisement for the G.I.

From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2024

I smiled back, much less radiantly, keeping my upper lip down over a coal-black G.I. temporary filling showing between two of my front teeth.

From "Nine Stories" by J. D. Salinger

“It was lugged home in some GI’s duffel bag, without its case.”

From Slate ● Mar. 16, 2024

Anyway, after the bomb was dropped, the GI's who worked at the laboratory came up and shook my hand and said, “You were the person who stuck the hand of the great Enrico Fermi.”

From Scientific American ● Jul. 27, 2023

The aircraft chase the GI’s informal prayer as reliably as the violins tail the piano in Chanda Dancy’s treacly score.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 21, 2022

A GI’s fiancee resents his marriage of convenience to a buddy’s English girlfriend.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 3, 2020

After all, thousands of GI's had probably been discharged with a duffel bag full of "liberated" Very pistols and flares.

From The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt

In theory, the law was “colorblind,” offering the same educational support to Black GIs as to white GIs.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 18, 2026

The German bases were the largest peacetime foreign deployment of American troops abroad, said Thomas Maulucci, history professor at the University of Connecticut who co-edited a book about American GIs in Germany.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026

"The soldiers who once called each other Redcoats and Yankees became the Tommies and the GIs who together saved the free world," he said.

From Barron's ● Apr. 28, 2026

As we know, many children of Vietnamese women and American GIs did not get evacuated, and they were not killed by the victors.

From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2025

The GIs were spread on other planes and me and Peewee talked a lieutenant into putting us both on a flight to Fort Ord, in California.

From "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers