maru

noun3

1. •
   A Japanese ship, especially a merchant ship.

   • Intelligence Report […] It is possible that there may be an increase in the number of transports and marus. — 1941
2. •
   A large, circular punctuation mark (。) used as a full stop in Japanese text.
3. •
   (informal) A semi-voiced diacritic (゜) used with Japanese kana to change a /h/ to a /p/.