MELANESIA

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Melanesia mean? 

• MELANESIA (noun)
  The noun MELANESIA has 1 sense:

1. the islands in the southwestern part of Oceania

  Familiarity information: MELANESIA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MELANESIA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The islands in the southwestern part of Oceania

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

archipelago (a group of many islands in a large body of water)

Meronyms (parts of "Melanesia"):

Fiji Islands; Fijis (a group of more than 800 islands (100 inhabited) in the southwestern Pacific; larger islands (Viti Levu and Vanua Levu) are of volcanic origin surrounded by coral reefs; smaller islands are coral)

Bismarck Archipelago (a group of islands in the southwestern Pacific to the northeast of New Guinea; part of Papua New Guinea)

New Caledonia (an island to the to the east of Australia and to the north of New Zealand)

Solomon Islands; Solomons (the northernmost islands are part of Papua New Guinea; the remainder form an independent state within the British Commonwealth)

New Hebrides; Republic of Vanuatu; Vanuatu (a volcanic island republic in Melanesia; independent since 1980)

Domain member category:

cargo cult ((Melanesia) the followers of one of several millenarian cults that believe salvation will come in the form of wealth ('cargo') brought by westerners; some ascribe divine attributes to westerners on first contact (especially to missionaries))

Holonyms ("Melanesia" is a part of...):

Oceania; Oceanica (a large group of islands in the south Pacific including Melanesia and Micronesia and Polynesia (and sometimes Australasia and the Malay Archipelago))

Austronesia (islands of central and South Pacific (Indonesia and Melanesia and Micronesia and Polynesia))

 Context examples 

Denotes a person from any of the islands in the western pacific encompassing the area from the Philippines in the west, Indonesia to the south west, Papua New Guinea and Melanesia to the south, and Polynesia to the south-east and east.

(Micronesian, NCI Thesaurus)