English Explanatory Dictionary

Papua

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The southern part of what is now called Papua New Guinea, formerly administered as a separate territory to New Guinea.
  2. The western part of New Guinea, currently part of Indonesia.
  3. A province of Indonesia.
noun
  1. A person indigenous to Papua.

Pronunciation

/ˈpaːpwə/

Word forms

Papua Papuas

Etymology

There are three theories: * From Malay pepuah (“curly (of hair)”) for the natives of the island of New Guinea. * From Ternate/Tidore papo ua (“not united; not coalesced”), referring to the territory that geographically was far away from the Sultanate of Tidore (and thus not united). The territory was called papo ua gam sio (“nine village/region that is not united”). * From Biak sup i babwa (“the land below [the sunset]”), referring to the islands (Raja Ampat) west of the Bird's Head, as far as Halmahera.

Related words

Irian Jaya New Guinea West Irian West Papua

Derived words

Gulf of Papua Papuan Papua New Guinea West Papua

Translations

Arabic: بَابْوَا Armenian: Պապուա Belarusian: Па́пуа Chinese Mandarin: 巴布亞 /巴布亚 Finnish: Papua French: Papouasie Georgian: პაპუა German: Papua Greek: Παπουασία Irish: Papua Japanese: パプア Korean: 파푸아 Latin: Papua Marathi: पापुआ Polish: Papua Rarotongan: Pāpua Russian: Па́пуа Spanish: Papúa Ukrainian: Па́пуа
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on P Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary