Taiwan
Etymology

The specific form "Taiwan" in English emerged from the letters of cmn-wadegiles Tʻai²-wan¹ romanization of Mandarin - 臺灣 and also possibly the romaji of Japanese - 臺灣(たいわん) (taiwan), which both of whom are ultimately from Literary Chinese 臺灣, which came from nan-hbl - 大員, 大圓, 臺員, 大灣, 臺灣, etc.

Pronunciation
  • (America) IPA: /ˌtaɪˈwɑn/
  • (British) IPA: /ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/, /ˌtaɪˈwæn/, /ˌtaɪˈwɒn/
Proper noun
  1. A country in East Asia. [from 20th c.]
    Synonyms: Chinese Taipei, Republic of China, ROC, Formosa, Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu
  2. An island between the Taiwan Strait and Philippine Sea in East Asia. [1600s]
    Synonyms: Formosa
  3. An administrative division including Taiwan and nearby islands.
    Synonyms: Formosa
    1. (historical) A prefecture of Fujian, China (Qing Empire) (1683–1885).
    2. (historical) A province of China (Qing Empire) (1885–1895).
    3. (historical) A dependency of Japan (1895–1945).
    4. A province of Taiwan (Republic of China) (from 1945).
    5. (disputed) A claimed province of China (People's Republic of China/mainland China) (from 1949). [from mid 20th c.]
  4. (historical) Synonym of Tainan, A city in Taiwan, ;.
  5. (astronomy) 2169 Taiwan, a main belt asteroid. [from mid 20th c.]
Translations Translations


This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004
Offline English dictionary