Kaiju

//ˈkai.d͡ʒu// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fictional giant monster, particularly of the kind found in Japanese science fiction films and other media, like Godzilla, King Kong or Gamera.

    "The resurrections of Mothra, the giant butterfly in Japanese kaiju movies, are treated as colourful religious events, glitter falling upon fat children as the fluffy-faced behemoth dries its wings."

Example

More examples

"The resurrections of Mothra, the giant butterfly in Japanese kaiju movies, are treated as colourful religious events, glitter falling upon fat children as the fluffy-faced behemoth dries its wings."

Etymology

From Japanese 怪獣 (かいじゅう, kaijū), from Middle Chinese 怪 (kweajᴴ, “strange, fantastic”) + 獸 (syuwᴴ, “beast”) (compare Mandarin 怪獸 /怪兽 (guàishòu)).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.