Kami

name, noun

name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An animistic god or spirit in the Shinto religion of Japan.

    "Chanting the mantra of the fire kami, they called to the blaze, summoning the heart of each flickering flame to life."

  2. 2
    A basic origami paper, usually printed with a colour or pattern on one side.
  3. 3
    An ethnic and linguistic group in Morogoro Region, Tanzania. plural, plural-only
  4. 4
    one the Shinto deities (including mythological beings, spirits of distinguished men, forces of nature) wordnet
  5. 5
    The metaphysical causal generator of motion, life, or divinish aura.
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A Bantu language of Tanzania.
  2. 2
    A Niger-Congo language of Nigeria.

Example

More examples

"All natural objects and phenomena used to be considered as having kami, so the gods of Shinto were uncountably numerous."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Japanese 神 (kami, “god, spirit, deity”).

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Japanese 紙 (kami, “paper”).

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