Definitions

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

  • noun A strong desire or inclination; a yearning or craving.
  • intransitive verb To have a strong desire or inclination; yearn.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A variant of eyen, plural of eye.
  • noun The monetary unit of Japan since 1871, represented
  • noun by a gold coin weighing 1.666 grams, .900 fine, and thus practically equal in value to the United States gold dollar; and
  • noun by a silver coin weighing 26.956 grams (416 grains), .900 fine, and thus about equal to the silver dollar of the United States.
  • noun A name given by the Indians about the Klamath Lakes of Oregon to the short-nosed sucker, Chasmistes brevirostris.
  • A dialectal form of yon.

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

  • noun The unit of value and account in Japan. The yen is equal to 100 sen. From Japan's adoption of the gold standard, in 1897, to about 1913 the value of the yen was about 50 cents. In 1997 and 1998 the value of the yen varied from 80 per U. S. dollar to 120 per dollar.

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

  • noun The unit of Japanese currency, equal to 100 sen.
  • noun A coin or note worth one yen.
  • noun A strong desire, urge, or yearning.
  • verb To have a strong desire for.

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

  • verb have a desire for something or someone who is not present
  • noun the basic unit of money in Japan; equal to 100 sen
  • noun a yearning for something or to do something

Etymologies

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

[Japanese en (romanized as yen, in the first European systems for romanizing Japanese, reflecting Japanese pronunciation of the 16th century), from Middle Chinese yan, round (in reference to the shape of the coin); also the source of Mandarin yuán, round; see yuan.]

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

[Cantonese jyun6, hope, wish, from Middle Chinese ŋyan` (also the source of Mandarin yuàn).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Japanese  (en, "yen, circle").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From yen-yen ("a craving for opium"), from Mandarin  (Mandarin: yǐn; Cantonese: yan5, "addiction, craving (for opium)").

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Examples

Comments

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  • ¥ or

    September 7, 2008

  • "a yen for branded clothes"

    January 23, 2009