Melanesian

adj, noun

adj, noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A Melanesian person.

    "Blackbirding was the euphemism given to the slave-trading that occurred in the Pacific from the mid-1800s through to the early-1900s. According to one study, blackbirding, [as] “the practice of luring Melanesians and Polynesians to toil for next to nothing was called”, involved upwards of 60,000 people between 1863 and 1904 (Horne, 2007, p. 2)."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to Melanesia. not-comparable

    "While Melanesian cannibals make "long pig," barbecuing enemies, legal and political cannibals in San Francisco put a beautiful wealthy woman, Penny Penny Hill, on trial for murder […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to Melanesia or its people or culture wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
melanesid

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 Melanesia + -an.

Related phrases

Australo-Melanesian

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