Palau
name, noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative spelling of pilaf (“dish of browned rice etc.”). alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
- 1 A country consisting of around 340 islands in Micronesia, in Oceania. Official name: Republic of Palau. Capital: Ngerulmud.
"Another society in which wealth per se was highly valued was Palau, but wealth belonging to descent units and not to individuals.[…] Palau society was divided into a large number of individually named, exogamous matriclans, and these were in turn subdivided into named matrilineages, each of which was a land-owning corporation and localized within a single community."
Example
More examples"I hate every single other country. Even Palau."
Etymology
Borrowed from Palauan Belau (“Palau”), traditionally derived from aidebelau (“indirect replies”) in reference to the island's creation story, or from beluu (“village”), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *banua (“inhabited land, territory”).
Related phrases
More for "palau"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.