Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • An island in the southwest Pacific Ocean north of Australia. The western half is part of Indonesia, and the eastern half forms the major portion of Papua New Guinea. Inhabited by Papuan and Austronesian peoples, it was named by 16th-century European explorers for the Guinea coast of western Africa.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A large island in the Pacific Ocean, north of Australia, whose territory is divided between Indonesia in the west and Papua New Guinea in the east.
  • proper noun historical the northern part of what is now called Papua New Guinea, formerly administered as a separate territory to Papua.
  • proper noun informal the nation more properly referred to as Papua New Guinea.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Pacific island to the north of Australia; the 2nd largest island in the world; the western part is governed by Indonesia and the eastern part is Papua New Guinea

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