21 English Words Borrowed From Chinese, and Their Origins

Short answer: English has borrowed more from Chinese than most people notice: tea, kung fu, feng shui, dim sum, bok choy, ginseng, wok, even a yen for something and the phrase lose face. Below are 21 of them with the Chinese each one came from. Most arrived through Cantonese or Hokkien, or in the spellings used before pinyin — which is why so few of them sound like Mandarin.

Loanwords from Chinese are an odd set. Almost none of them came from Mandarin, the language most learners study, because English met Chinese first in the southern trading ports, and later in kung fu films made in Hong Kong. So a learner who knows the English word often fails to recognise the Mandarin one — kumquat and jīnjú share nothing you can hear. That makes the list more useful than it looks: every entry is a word you already know, with a Mandarin word attached to learn.

The Chinese, pinyin and meaning on each tile come from our own dictionary when the page loads, not from anything typed into this article; a word it cannot read is left out. Tap a tile to hear the Mandarin.

Food and drink

Most of the words English took from Chinese arrived on a plate or in a cup, and most of them came through the southern ports — Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Xiamen — which is why they rarely match the Mandarin reading shown on each tile.

tea

Hokkien Tea

English took tea from the Hokkien pronunciation of the Fujian coast, where Dutch traders bought it. Languages that got tea overland or through Portuguese Macau took the other pronunciation instead — which is where chai comes from. Tea and chai are the same Chinese word, borrowed twice.

茶 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

dim sum

Cantonese Snack

The Cantonese name for the small dishes served with tea. The Mandarin reading is diǎnxīn, and our dictionary glosses it simply as a snack — in Mandarin it covers pastries and light bites in general, not a style of meal.

点心 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

bok choy

Cantonese Chinese cabbage

Cantonese for “white vegetable”. In Mandarin the same word usually means the big, pale napa cabbage, so ordering báicài in Beijing may not get you what English calls bok choy.

白菜 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

tofu

via Japanese Tofu; bean curd †

English borrowed tofu from Japanese, which had borrowed it from Chinese centuries earlier. The Mandarin is dòufu, with a light second syllable.

豆腐 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

lychee

Chinese Lychee ([fruit])

Also spelled litchi, an older spelling that is closer to the Mandarin lìzhī.

荔枝 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

kumquat

Cantonese Cumquat (kumquat)

Cantonese for “golden orange”. The Mandarin reading is jīnjú, and nothing about it sounds like kumquat, which is the clearest sign of which port a word came through.

金桔 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

ginseng

Hokkien Ginseng

From the Hokkien pronunciation; the Mandarin is rénshēn. The first character is the everyday word for person, after the root's forked, human-like shape.

人参 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

oolong

Chinese Oolong tea

“Black dragon” tea. English kept the first two syllables and dropped the word for tea, which Chinese keeps on the end: wūlóngchá.

乌龙茶 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

hoisin

Cantonese Seafood

Hoisin is Cantonese for seafood, and hoisin sauce contains none — the name survives from what the sauce was served with, not what is in it. In Mandarin hǎixiān is simply the seafood itself.

海鲜 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

wok

Cantonese Cooking pot (caldron - pot)

A Cantonese word. The same character exists in Mandarin, read huò, but everyday Mandarin calls the pan a 锅 (guō) — so a Mandarin speaker may not connect the two at all.

镬 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

Martial arts, health and ideas

The second wave came with martial arts films, acupuncture and interior design in the twentieth century. These arrived written in older romanizations, not pinyin, which is why chi and qi can both be right.

kung fu

Cantonese Skill; art †

In Chinese 功夫 means skill won by long, hard practice, and it is not limited to fighting: a cook or a calligrapher can have it. English narrowed it to the martial art. The Mandarin is gōngfu.

功夫 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

wushu

Mandarin Martial arts

The general Mandarin word for martial arts, and in English the name of the modern competitive sport. Where kung fu came through Cantonese films, wushu came later, in pinyin.

武术 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

tai chi

Mandarin Shadowboxing or Taiji, T'aichi or T'aichichuan; traditional form of physical exercise or relaxation †

Short for t’ai chi ch’uan, the older Wade–Giles spelling of tàijíquán. English dropped the last syllable. The chi here is jí, a different word from the qi below — Wade–Giles wrote them almost the same way.

太极拳 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

qi (chi)

Mandarin Gas (air - anger - smell)

The everyday meaning is gas or air, which is our dictionary's first sense. The sense English borrowed — a body's vital energy — comes from traditional medicine and the martial arts. Qi is the pinyin spelling; chi and ch’i are older ones.

气 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

feng shui

Mandarin Feng-Shui

The two characters are the everyday words for wind and water. English borrowed it in the older romanization, which is why most English speakers say “fung shway”; the Mandarin is fēngshuǐ.

风水 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

Everyday English you might not suspect

Some borrowings have been in English long enough that nobody hears them as foreign any more.

yen (a craving)

Cantonese Addiction (craving)

Having “a yen for” something has nothing to do with Japanese money. It comes from the Cantonese word for a craving — originally a craving for opium — and the dictionary still glosses 瘾 as addiction.

瘾 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

Shih Tzu

Mandarin Lion

The dog's name is the old Wade–Giles spelling of shīzi, lion — it was bred to look like the lions of Chinese art.

狮子 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

taikonaut

Mandarin Outer space

A modern coinage: tàikōng, outer space, with the -naut of astronaut and cosmonaut, used in English for Chinese astronauts since the late 1990s.

太空 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

typhoon

Contested Typhoon (hurricane)

Contested, and included with that flag. English typhoon has more than one parent: an Arabic and Persian word for a storm reached English through Portuguese, the Greek storm-giant Typhon shaped the spelling, and the southern Chinese word for a great wind — Mandarin táifēng — is usually credited with pulling it into the form English settled on.

台风 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

Phrases English translated word for word

A calque borrows the idea and translates the parts, so nothing sounds Chinese. These two are the clearest cases.

lose face

Calque Lose face

To lose face is a straight translation of the Chinese expression, adopted by English speakers in China in the nineteenth century. Save face was built on it later, in English.

丢脸 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

add oil

Calque Refuel (make extra effort)

The Hong Kong English cheer of encouragement, word for word from jiāyóu — “add fuel”, as in step on it. The Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2018.

加油 in the dictionary — stroke order, audio and the full entry.

Why the spellings do not look like pinyin

Pinyin became China's official romanization in 1958 and the international standard in 1982. Nearly every word on this page reached English before that, by one of three routes:

Through Cantonese — the language of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and of the first Chinese communities in Britain, North America and Australia. Dim sum, bok choy, wok, kumquat and hoisin came this way, and kung fu came with Hong Kong cinema.
Through Hokkien — the language of the Fujian coast and the Chinese of Southeast Asia, where European traders bought tea. Tea and ginseng came this way.
Through Wade–Giles — the older English spelling of Mandarin. Tai chi, feng shui and Shih Tzu are Mandarin words spelled the way English wrote Mandarin until the 1980s; in pinyin they are tàijí, fēngshuǐ and shīzi. The romanization guide has the full comparison, and What Is Hanyu Pinyin? covers the system that replaced it.

The words that came later came in pinyin — wushu, qi, taikonaut — and those are the ones that look like the Mandarin a learner meets in a textbook.

Three that are often called Chinese

These turn up on every list of English words from Chinese. None of them is shown with Chinese characters here, and the reason is different for each.

Ketchup. The usual account traces it to a Hokkien word for a fermented fish sauce that British traders met in Southeast Asia in the late 1600s, long before anyone added tomatoes. The account is widely accepted; which Chinese characters wrote that word is not settled.
Tycoon. From Japanese taikun, a title foreigners used for the shogun. Japanese built the word from Chinese characters, but English borrowed it from Japan, not from China.
Gung ho. A slogan of the Chinese industrial cooperatives of the 1930s, taken up by a US Marine battalion in the Second World War and meaning “work together”. It is Chinese in origin, but our dictionary has no entry for the word, so the page does not give its characters or reading.

All 21 words, with the Mandarin

Readings and meanings from our dictionary. Add any of them to your review deck, or take the short quiz below the table.

Chinese	Pinyin	English	Loanword
茶	chá	Tea	tea
点心	diǎnxīn	Snack	dim sum
白菜	báicài	Chinese cabbage	bok choy
豆腐	dòufu	Tofu; bean curd †	tofu
荔枝	lìzhī	Lychee ([fruit])	lychee
金桔	jīnjú	Cumquat (kumquat)	kumquat
人参	rénshēn	Ginseng	ginseng
乌龙茶	wūlóngchá	Oolong tea	oolong
海鲜	hǎixiān	Seafood	hoisin
镬	huò	Cooking pot (caldron - pot)	wok
功夫	gōngfu	Skill; art †	kung fu
武术	wǔshù	Martial arts	wushu
太极拳	tàijíquán	Shadowboxing or Taiji, T'aichi or T'aichichuan; traditional form of physical exercise or relaxation †	tai chi
气	qì	Gas (air - anger - smell)	qi (chi)
风水	fēngshuǐ	Feng-Shui	feng shui
瘾	yǐn	Addiction (craving)	yen (a craving)
狮子	shīzi	Lion	Shih Tzu
太空	tàikōng	Outer space	taikonaut
台风	táifēng	Typhoon (hurricane)	typhoon
丢脸	diūliǎn	Lose face	lose face
加油	jiāyóu	Refuel (make extra effort)	add oil

Quick quiz — 5 words from this page

Frequently Asked Questions

The best-established are tea, kung fu, feng shui, tai chi, qi, dim sum, bok choy, tofu (through Japanese), lychee, kumquat, ginseng, oolong, hoisin, wok and yen in the sense of a craving, plus the translated phrases lose face and add oil. Most came through Cantonese or Hokkien rather than Mandarin, which is why they rarely sound like the Mandarin word.

Yes. English tea comes from the Hokkien pronunciation of the Chinese word for tea, which Dutch traders picked up on the Fujian coast. Chai is the same Chinese word borrowed by a different route. The Mandarin is chá.

Because English borrowed it from Cantonese, through martial arts films, long before pinyin became the standard spelling. The Mandarin word is gōngfu. Feng shui, tai chi and Shih Tzu are spelled in Wade-Giles, the romanization English used before pinyin, for the same reason.

Probably. The usual account traces it to a Hokkien word for a fermented fish sauce that British traders met in Southeast Asia, long before tomatoes were involved. The Chinese characters for that word are not settled, so this page does not show any.

Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary added add oil in 2018 as a Hong Kong English expression of encouragement. It is a word-for-word translation of the Chinese jiāyóu, literally to add fuel.

English Words Borrowed From Chinese