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
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
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
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pinyin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near pinyin
Cite this Entry
“Pinyin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pinyin. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
pinyin
noun
pin·yin
ˈpin-ˈyin 
often capitalized
: a system for writing Chinese words by using Roman letters to represent the sounds
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