MELANESIA

• 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.

• MELANESIA (noun)

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 northeast of New Guinea; part of Papua New Guinea)

New Caledonia (an island east of Australia and 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) 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))