Jinja
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A Shinto place of worship.
- 1 A city and district at the north end of Lake Victoria, Uganda.
"If cities ailed, Jinja had sleeping sickness. Idi Amin’s sudden expulsion of whites and Asians back in 1972 had hit the city harder than anywhere else. In just over a decade, Jinja’s status as the country’s largest industrial city had become questionable."
Example
More examples"If cities ailed, Jinja had sleeping sickness. Idi Amin’s sudden expulsion of whites and Asians back in 1972 had hit the city harder than anywhere else. In just over a decade, Jinja’s status as the country’s largest industrial city had become questionable."
Etymology
Borrowed from Japanese 神社 (じんじゃ, jinja), from Middle Chinese 神社, from Old Chinese 神社 (“sacrificial altar, shrine”), from 神 (*hlin, “deity, divine”) + 社 (*ɦljaːʔ, “Earth deity [and altar]”). Cognate with Mandarin 神社 (shénshè, “shrine”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.