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Although yen suggests no more than a strong desire these days (as in "a yen for a beach vacation"), at one time someone with a yen was in deep trouble: the first meaning of yen was an intense craving for opium. The word comes from Cantonese yīn-yáhn, a combination of yīn, meaning "opium," and yáhn, "craving." In English, the Chinese syllables were translated as yen-yen.
Synonyms
Examples of yen in a Sentence
Yuri Kageyama, Quartz, 22 Apr. 2024
The entrance fee at both is 400 yen (about $2.65) for adults and 300 yen (about $2) for children.
—Paula Deitz, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Apr. 2024
The Japanese sent specialists to the capital, Kathmandu, to help Nepali farmers get serious about making the stuff of cold, hard yen.
—Alex Travelli Uma Bista, New York Times, 15 Apr. 2024
Police suspect that Yamakawa’s total profit amounted to millions of yen (equivalent to anywhere between tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars), and an investigation is underway.
—Amrita Khalid, The Verge, 12 Apr. 2024
Adult tickets cost between 500 and 1,500 yen ($3 to $10) each, depending on the day, and adults are allowed to bring two kids per person for free.
—Talia Avakian, Travel + Leisure, 2 Mar. 2024
The winning strategy in the past two years has been to overweight Japanese equities relative to international benchmarks, while also hedging yen exposure back into dollars.
—Nick Sargen, Forbes, 23 Feb. 2024
Needless to say, that yen for solemnity is not exclusive to Delon.
—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 11 Apr. 2024
That’s on top of some 330 billion yen ($2.17 billion) in subsidies already pledged by the government.
—Junko Ogura, CNN, 10 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'yen.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near yen
Cite this Entry
“Yen.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yen. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.
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