katakana

[ kah-tuh-kah-nuh; Japanese kah-tah-kah-nah ]

noun

1. the more angular, less commonly used of the two Japanese syllabaries.

katakana

/ ˌkɑːtəˈkɑːnə /

noun

1. one of the two systems of syllabic writing employed for the representation of Japanese, based on Chinese ideograms. It is used mainly for foreign or foreign-derived words

Word History and Origins

Origin of katakana¹

1720–30; < Japanese, equivalent to kata part (of kanji) + kana kana

Word History and Origins

Origin of katakana¹

Japanese, from kata side + kana

Example Sentences

Before we parted ways, he asked me to repeat my name, and wrote it down on the back of a receipt in katakana, a Japanese alphabet commonly used for foreign words.

From New York Times

The company announced on Twitter it had decided to replace the penguin with "Dojo-chan" - an anthropomorphic representation of the Japanese katakana character "do".

From BBC

“I loved the Japanese language,” she writes, “and, more than anything, Japanese literature written with the three distinct systems of Japanese writing: graceful hiragana ひらがな, spartan katakana カタカナ, and dense kanji 漢字.”

From New York Times

In a similar vein, Kana Quest is a sliding block puzzle game that’s designed to teach you Japanese hiragana and katakana characters.

From The Verge

In 1999, I was in a Tokyo department store walking down a household cleaning products aisle and had what you might call an ecstatic moment when the pastel-tinted plastic bottles on both sides of the aisle temporarily froze my reptile cortex: pink, yellow, baby blue, turquoise — so many cute-looking bottles filled with so many toxic substances, all labeled with bold katakana lettering.

From The Guardian