waifu

noun | WYE-foo

one’s ideal fictional anime wife or favorite female character

What does waifu mean?

In anime or manga culture, waifu refers to someone’s ideal fictional wife/girlfriend or a usually attractive female character whom they feel a parasocial emotional, romantic, or sexual attachment to. Waifu can also refer to an actual wife.

Examples of waifu

Seriously, Touka is the perfect waifu. Caring, sexy, an awesome cook, just a little bit frightening, and she can effortlessly flip herself onto a roof and stick the landing.
—@Stilts, Random Curiosity, 14 Nov. 2012

She’s waifu. She’s boo. She’s so damn bae that Margot Robbie is playing her in the upcoming Suicide Squad film.

—Malik Forté, Nerdist, 2 June 2015

Asuna is my waifu🎀 and I always get super intimidated trying to cosplay her ...
—@kalikins7, Instagram, 27 Dec. 2020

One could file her under the “intelligent beauty” stereotype, except she pilots a giant mech, which makes her excellent “waifu” material.
—Ishaan Sahdev, Siliconera, 11 Jan. 2010

But that doesn’t mean we need another white-haired, red-eyed shonen protagonist to save the day, or a pink-haired anime waifu in a schoolgirl uniform that somehow is proficient with a gun.
—Natalie Lambert, Comic Book Resource, 4 Sept. 2025

Where does waifu come from?

Waifu is a Japanese loanword, the katakana version of the English word wife. Waifu may have been used with this meaning as early as the 1800s, and likely becoming more common in the late 1950s due to increased U.S. presence in Postwar Japan.

Among close relatives and intimate friends men refer to their wives by personal name .... use was also reported of furau (from the German) and waifu (from the English).
—Harumi Befu and Edward Norbeck, Japanese Usages of Terms of Relationship, 1958

These, together with such loanwords as waifu (wife) ... are used freely with an awareness of their delicate nuances of meaning.
—Haruhiko Kindaichi, The Japanese Language, 1978, originally published in Japanese by Iwanami Shoten, Nippongo, 1957

… a women’s group called Group for Wives (Grupu Waifu), which has put out a bimonthly magazine based on letters from readers since 1963.
—Sumiko Iwao, The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality, 1993

The phrase mai waifu has appeared in books/manga since the 1990s, however the specific internet usage of it, referring to an ideal anime partner or beloved female character, was popularized by the 2002 series Azumanga Daioh.