Laowai

//laʊˈwaɪ// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A foreigner in mainland China or Taiwan, (particularly) a Western one. colloquial

Synonyms

All synonyms
caucasiancolonizercrackerhonkyice monkeyivory

Etymology

From Mandarin 老外 (lǎowài, literally “old outside[r]”).

Related phrases

mainland china

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