pinyin

noun

pin·​yin ˈpin-ˈyin How to pronounce pinyin (audio)
often capitalized
: a system for romanizing Chinese ideograms in which tones are indicated by diacritics and unaspirated consonants are transcribed as voiced compare wade-giles

Examples of pinyin in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
The committee then turned to a new system of romanization, known today as pinyin. Hugo Restall, WSJ, 1 Mar. 2022 To integrate that useful principle into his encoding scheme, Zhi decided to index characters by their components—the simpler characters within each ideograph—using the first letter of each component’s pinyin spelling. Jing Tsu, Wired, 23 Jan. 2022 And the campaign has already caused a stir online, with many questioning the rationale behind such replacements, since foreign visitors who don't speak any Chinese are unlikely to understand pinyin. Nectar Gan and Steve George, CNN, 5 Jan. 2022 The most common method used pinyin, the system of romanized spelling for Mandarin that Chinese students learn in school. Mara Hvistendahl, Wired, 18 May 2020

Word History

Etymology

Chinese (Beijing) pīnyīn to spell phonetically, from pīn to arrange + yīn sound, pronunciation

First Known Use

1963, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of pinyin was in 1963

Dictionary Entries Near pinyin

Cite this Entry

“Pinyin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pinyin. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.

Kids Definition

pinyin

noun
pin·​yin ˈpin-ˈyin How to pronounce pinyin (audio)
often capitalized
: a system for writing Chinese words by using Roman letters to represent the sounds
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