Dictionaries › Malay

bangsa

Pronunciation: /ˈbaŋsə/

“bangsa” is a Malay word. Its 6 meanings in English:

noun

  1. A nation; a group of society that is huge and has a shared civilization, custom, art, language, history, tradition, and identity, and also inhabits an area with clear borders.
  2. A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of common physical characteristics, such as skin colour or hair type.
  3. A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of a common heritage; an ethnicity or ethnic group.
  4. A type or kind.
  5. A gender or sex.
  6. High status or prestige.

Etymology

From Classical Malay بڠسا (bangsa), from Old Malay vaṃśa, from Sanskrit वंश (vaṃśá, “offspring, lineage; bamboo”), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *wanćás (“ceiling beam”). Cognate of Javanese ꦧꦁꦱ (bangsa). Doublet of wangsa.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “bangsa” there

More Malay words

About this dictionary

The Malay dictionary on Glottosphere has 9,412 entries with a page. Browse the Malay dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.