Wantok
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A close comrade; a person with whom one has a strong social bond, usually based on a shared language. Papua-New-Guinea, sometimes, term-of-address
"I refer to the classes of settlers thus distinguished as ‘wantok’ (although their members did not always have the same mother tongue), and the areas from which they came as ‘home areas’. […] There were 7 groups of wantok among the Situm block-holders and 4 among the Gobari holders."
Example
More examples"I refer to the classes of settlers thus distinguished as ‘wantok’ (although their members did not always have the same mother tongue), and the areas from which they came as ‘home areas’. […] There were 7 groups of wantok among the Situm block-holders and 4 among the Gobari holders."
Etymology
Borrowed from Tok Pisin wantok, from English one talk, that is, a speaker of the same language.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.