Papuan

//ˈpɑpuən// adj, name, noun

adj, name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone from Papua or Papua New Guinea
  2. 2
    any of the indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea or New Britain or the Solomon Islands that are not Malayo-Polynesian languages wordnet
  3. 3
    a native or inhabitant of Papua New Guinea or New Guinea wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    From, or pertaining to Papua or Papua New Guinea
  2. 2
    Pertaining to the Papuan group of languages.
Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to Papua or its people or language wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A geographical grouping of languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and its neighboring islands, as opposed to Austronesian.

Synonyms

All synonyms
languagepapuan language

Example

More examples

"People have variety. My preferred model of anthropology has four subspecies of the human species: Mongoloid (variants Sundadont, Sinodont, and Super-Sinodont), Caucasoid (variants Nordic and Mediterranean), Negroid (variants Congoid and Capoid), and Australoid (variants Veddoid, Negrito, Papuan, Melanesian, Aborigine)."

Etymology

From Papua + -an.

Related phrases

Australo-Papuan babblerPapuan boobooknew guineapapua new guinea

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.