Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A game of Chinese origin usually played by four persons with tiles resembling dominoes and bearing various designs, which are drawn and discarded until one player wins with a hand of four combinations of three tiles each and a pair of matching tiles.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A Chinese game played by 4 people with 144 tiles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A game (originally Chinese) for four players, using a collection of tiles divided into five or six suits.
  • noun A solitaire game using the same tiles.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Chinese game played by 4 people with 144 tiles

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Mandarin májiàng.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Cantonese 麻將 / 麻将 (Jyutping: maa4 zoeng3, Yale: ma4 jeung3), standard Mandarin: 麻將 / 麻将 (májiàng).

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Examples

  • Online games such as mahjong are gaining popularity in Taiwan.

    unknown title 2009

  • Saki launched some kind of mahjong craze among the anime-watching population, as well.

    Anime Nano! 2009

  • Saki herself is returning to form and playing a kind of mahjong that seems to surpass even Koromo's control over the other players.

    Mania News Feed 2009

  • Online games such as mahjong are gaining popularity in Taiwan.

    unknown title 2009

  • More and more minigames have been added in the meantime, each with their own in-game bonus: there's a whole host of casino games, bowling lanes and batting cages, traditional Japanese pursuits such as mahjong, shogi, & karaoke, and finally a Hostess Club where protagonist Kiryu can either patronize the club and 'date' the various hostesses or help manage the place to discover new talent.

    GayGamer.net 2009

  • Saki herself is returning to form and playing a kind of mahjong that seems to surpass even Koromo's control over the other players.

    Mania News Feed 2009

  • My mother was in a bowling league, played mahjong, waited for my father to come home from work, got her hair done every Friday at the beauty parlor, and went for manicures.

    History of a Suicide Jill Bialosky 2011

  • Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett have a plasma in their Airstream trailer; they're on their way to Yuma, Ariz., for a mahjong tournament.

    Your NBA Playoff Questions Answered Jason Gay 2011

  • My mother was in a bowling league, played mahjong, waited for my father to come home from work, got her hair done every Friday at the beauty parlor, and went for manicures.

    History of a Suicide Jill Bialosky 2011

  • At the Baoshan depot, clothes dried on makeshift lines as drivers snapped mahjong tiles in the cheap motel rooms that surrounded it and one driver's son shouted from behind a plastic mask of a Chinese folk hero.

    Truckers Idle Rigs in Shanghai James T. Areddy 2011

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