Bahasa

//baˈhɑːsə// name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    the dialect of Malay used as the national language of the Republic of Indonesia or of Malaysia wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    the Malay-Indonesian language Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, nonstandard, proscribed

Synonyms

All synonyms
bahasa indonesiaindonesianindonesianmalay

Example

More examples

"Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are almost the same, but their vocabularies are very different."

Etymology

Borrowed from Indonesian and Malay bahasa (“language”), itself from Sanskrit भाषा (bhāṣā, “language”), as a shortening of Bahasa Indonesia/Bahasa Malaysia. Compare the use of Irish Béarla (“English”), originally simply meant "language".

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