New Guinea
Americannoun
noun
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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)
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(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 is the world's second-largest island, after Greenland.
It was named for its resemblance to the Guinea coast of western Africa.
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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.
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
El Nino is emerging as a key 2027 production risk, particularly in Kalimantan and Papua New Guinea, she says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 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
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a notice that tsunami waves were possible "within the next three hours" along the coasts of the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea.
From Barron's ● Jun. 8, 2026
For the last 33 years, while conducting biological exploration in New Guinea, I have been spending my field time there constantly in the company of New Guineans who still use wild plants and animals extensively.
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.
