seppuku

Questions about seppuku

What does seppuku mean?

seppuku means "ritual suicide by self-disembowelment on a sword; practiced by samurai in the traditional Japanese society".

How many syllables are in seppuku?

seppuku has 3 syllables and divides as sep-pu-ku under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for seppuku?

Close synonyms include harakiri, hara-kiri, harikari. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is seppuku a common word?

seppuku is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.