yakuza

Etymology

It is borrowed from Japanese やくざ (yakuza, “ruffian, gangster”),^[2][3][4] which the dictionaries explain as the numbers eight, nine and three, the worst hand in a Japanese gambling card game.^{[3][5][6][7][8]} In that game a player's score is the last digit of the sum of the cards, so eight, nine and three make zero,^[8] and Etymonline describes it as a traditional game like baccarat, called “Oicho-Kabu”.^[9] According to the American Heritage Dictionary the word for "eight" is native, the one for "nine" comes from Early Middle Chinese, and the one for "three" is an altered form of a word from Middle Chinese, the source of the word behind sampan.^[8] The word came to mean a good-for-nothing and then a gangster;^[8][10] Etymonline suggests that the idea may be "good for nothing", or the bad luck of those who cross them, or the skill a player needs to win with that hand.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Japanese gangster or racketeer, or such people collectively: 1964, in Newsweek.^[3][4][9] Dictionary.com dates it to 1960–65.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word is usually plural in sense, for the gangsters as a group,^[3][5] and it is often used collectively for the organization itself.^[4][7] Evans quotes American newspapers of 1992 on the yakuza, also called boryokudan crime families, spreading from Hawaii across the United States, and records its use as an attribute.^[11]

Timeline

• 1964 – a Japanese gangster; such gangsters collectively.^[3][4][9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A Japanese gangster or racketeer.^[3][4][5]
2. the yakuza: the Japanese organized crime groups, involved in illegal gambling, extortion and other crimes.^[7][11][9]

Related words

• sampan

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
3. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Evans, Tom (1997), A Dictionary of Japanese Loanwords, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press