Phrase guide

Chinese restaurant syndrome

noun · 2 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

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Pronunciation

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noun

Meaning 1

A supposed syndrome associated with consumption of the westernized version of Chinese food, characterized by various symptoms such as burning and tingling sensations, rapid heartbeat, and drowsiness, and initially ascribed to monosodium glutamate (but possibly just psychosomatic, or hypernatremia from overconsumption of salt).

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable

Topics: gastroenterology, medicine, sciences

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

noun

Meaning 2

headache and tingling or burning feelings and sweating caused by eating food that contains monosodium glutamate

Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

Broader terms: syndrome

History

Etymology

Coined by Robert Ho Man Kwok in a 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Word forms

Inflections and variants

No separate word forms were provided.

Word family

Derived and related words

Derived: none provided

Related: MSG symptom complex

Semantic map

Other relationships

Hypernyms: monosodium glutamate symptom complex, syndrome

Sources

Where this information comes from

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