Malay
Americanadjective
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of, relating to, or characteristic of a racially intermixed people who are the dominant population of the Malay Peninsula and adjacent islands.
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of or relating to the language or culture of these people.
noun
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a member of the Malay people.
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an Austronesian language of Malaysia and Singapore, differing from Indonesian only in orthography.
noun
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a member of a people living chiefly in Malaysia and Indonesia who are descendants of Mongoloid immigrants
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the language of this people, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian family
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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.
"Screening a dialect film is now no different from screening a French or Malay film."
From BBC • Jun. 25, 2026
For centuries the Maniq -- one of Thailand's smallest ethnic minorities — lived as hunter-gatherers, roaming the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula, moving with the seasons in search of food.
From Barron's • Nov. 24, 2025
De' Conti acknowledged the fruit's esteem throughout the Malay archipelago, but considered its odour nauseating.
From Salon • Jul. 22, 2024
Both prisoners wore traditional tunics and trousers to court and sat mostly silently in court listening to the proceedings through Malay translation.
From New York Times • Jan. 16, 2024
Those details of linguistic relationships agree perfectly with the archaeological evidence that the colonization of the Malay Peninsula was recent, and followed rather than preceded the colonization of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
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.
