Taipan

//ˈtaɪpæn// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A foreign businessman in China; a tycoon.

    "Of course it was very sad, but the taipan could hardly help a smile when he thought how many of these young fellows he had drunk underground."

  2. 2
    Any venomous elapid snake of the genus Oxyuranus, found in Australia and New Guinea.
  3. 3
    large highly venomous snake of northeastern Australia wordnet
  4. 4
    A tycoon (usually of Chinese Filipino background) Philippines

Synonyms

All synonyms
captain of industryoxyuranus scutellatus

Example

More examples

"The inland taipan, a snake found in Australia, is the most venomous snake in the world."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Cantonese 大班 (daai⁶ baan¹, “big shot, rich businessman”), originally as taepan. Related to tycoon, from Japanese 大君(たいくん) (taikun).

Etymology 2

From the name of the Thaypan tribe of Aboriginal people of central Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia, or from Wik-Mungkan tay-pan (or dhayban).

Related phrases

Central Ranges taipanPapuan taipancoastal taipaninland taipanwestern taipannew guinea

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