Definition of "joss" []

• A Chinese image in a shrine. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It's a wise idea to think about how disaster-prone an area may be before retiring there, but no matter what we do, there's the "joss" factor."
• "At the entrance there sometimes stood the village "joss," although many villages had destroyed their idols."
• "This "joss" was a thick stake of wood, six or eight feet high, with the upper part roughly carved into the shape of a very ugly human face, and crudely coloured in vermilion and green."