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Pin·yinor pin·yin (pĭn′yĭn′, -yĭn)
A system for transcribing the pronunciation of the standard variety of Mandarin using the Roman alphabet, officially adopted by the People's Republic of China in 1979.
[Mandarin pīn yīn, to combine sounds into syllables, spell : pīn, to combine (from Middle Chinese pjiajŋ) + yīn, sound, syllable (from Middle Chinese ʔim).]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
(Linguistics) a system of romanized spelling developed in China in 1958: used to transliterate Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
(sometimes cap.) a system for transliterating Chinese into the Latin alphabet, introduced in 1958 and officially adopted by the People's Republic of China in 1979.
[< Chinese pīnyīn literally, phonetic spelling (pīn arrange, classify + yīn sound, pronunciation)]
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