New Guinea

American  

noun

1. a large island N of Australia, politically divided into the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya (West Irian) and the independent country of Papua New Guinea. About 316,000 sq. mi. (818,000 sq. km).

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New Guinea British  

noun

1. an island in the W Pacific, north of Australia: divided politically into Papua (formerly Irian Jaya, a province of Indonesia) in the west and Papua New Guinea in the east. There is a central chain of mountains and a lowland area of swamps in the south and along the Sepik River in the north. Area: 775 213 sq km (299 310 sq miles)

2. (until 1975) an administrative division of the former Territory of Papua and New Guinea, consisting of the NE part of the island of New Guinea together with the Bismarck Archipelago; now part of Papua New Guinea

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New Guinea Cultural  

1. Island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, north of Australia. The western half of the island is administered by Indonesia.

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New Guinea is the world's second-largest island, after Greenland.

It was named for its resemblance to the Guinea coast of western Africa.

Other Word Forms

• New Guinean
  adjective

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

New Guinea

As a young man, by his account, he smuggled diamonds, oversaw coconut plantations, dynamited fish, captained schooners and hunted killer cannibals in the New Guinea jungle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026

Analysts at research firm CRU said dry weather associated with El Niño is already affecting river-borne logistics at a major mine in Papua New Guinea.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026

Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Fiji also now have embassies in the city.

From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2026

To conduct the study, researchers sequenced the genomes of 177 people from 12 populations across Near Oceania, the southwestern Pacific region that includes Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 14, 2026

Thus, like the case of New Guinea, that of the eastern United States is instructive.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond