Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A loose alliance of Japanese criminal organizations and illegal enterprises.
- noun A Japanese gangster.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A Japanese
organized crime gang - noun A
member of a Japanese organized crime gang
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a Japanese gangster
- noun organized crime in Japan; an alliance of criminal organizations and illegal enterprises
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Japanese yakuza, card hand consisting of eight, nine, and three (the worst possible hand in a traditional Japanese card game in which a player's final score is the last digit of the sum of the values of the player's hand), good-for-nothing, yakuza : ya, eight (from Old Japanese) + ku, nine (from Early Middle Chinese kuw’ (also the source of Mandarin jiǔ, nine), ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *d-ku; akin to Tibetan dgu) + za, alteration of san, three (from Middle Chinese sam; also the source of Mandarin sān; see sampan).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Japanese, やくざ
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
hernesheir commented on the word yakuza
The worst hand in the Japanese card game oichokabu is an eight, a nine and a three - literally "ya-ku-za" - the origin of the Japanese word for gangster, yakuza.
December 11, 2010