Indonesian
Americannoun
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a member of the ethnic group consisting of the natives of Indonesia, the Filipinos, and the Malays of Malaysia.
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a member of a population supposed to have been resident in the Malay Archipelago before the Malays, and believed to constitute one element of the present mixed population of Malaysia and perhaps Polynesia.
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Official Name Bahasa Indonesia. an Indonesian language that is based on the form of Malay spoken in Java and has the status of official language in the Republic of Indonesia.
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the westernmost branch of the Austronesian family of languages, including Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Malagasy.
adjective
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of or relating to the Malay Archipelago.
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of or relating to Indonesia, the Indonesians, or their languages.
adjective
noun
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a native or inhabitant of Indonesia
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another name for Bahasa Indonesia
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Indonesian
First recorded in 1840–50; Indonesi(a) + -an
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Staying in the emerging-market index will keep Indonesian stocks in global investment mandates, preventing a further wave of foreign capital outflows and providing a much-needed confidence boost,” Gavekal’s Miller and Sikand said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 23, 2026
The septet's mammoth global tour was making a stop in her backyard – the Indonesian capital, Jakarta – and as a longtime fan, she couldn't fathom missing it.
From BBC • Jun. 21, 2026
Some of the SpaceX investors on Kahlon’s ledger are easy to identify: the Indian politician Abhishek Singhvi; Betsy DeVos, the former U.S. secretary of education; a British Virgin Islands company owned by Indonesian billionaires.
From Salon • Jun. 19, 2026
Or perhaps the vagueness stems from casting a mish-mash of Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese and American actors.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 11, 2026
Pacific Island history is encapsulated for me in an incident that happened when three Indonesian friends and I walked into a store in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesian New Guinea.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
