Word.ws English Dictionary

Formosan

Formosan adjective: of or relating to Formosa.

Adjective

Formosan (comparative more Formosan, superlative most Formosan)

  1. Of or relating to Formosa.
    • The great Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier, also spent some time at Öita, and Otomo, its lord, was the first Daimio to embrace Christianity. Still farther south, and in line with these, stretches the chain of the Liuchiu islands, the westernmost of the group lying within 50 miles of the...1905, Archibald Little, “The Island Empire: Japan”, in The Far East, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 283
    • A patrolman shot and killed a Formosan black bear in self defense last night, after it turned on the man who saw it attacking a dog in Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪).[…]
      Jhuosi Township Mayor Huang Pin-lun (黃品綸) announced news of the bear’s capture this morning and expressed apologies to the...2025 April 22, Hua Meng-ching, Hollie Younger, “Formosan black bear shot and killed in Hualien”, in Taipei Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2025, Taiwan News, page 2

Noun

Formosan (plural Formosans)

  1. An inhabitant, resident, or a person of descent from Formosa.
    • From his base at Amoy the Emperor Kanghi dispatched a fleet of 600 junks against Formosa. In two naval battles, on July 1 and 7, 1683, they defeated the Formosans, and occupied Penghu, one of the Pescadores Islands, forming the key of Taiwan.1926, Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, volume 1, Clarendon Press, page 48

Forms of Formosan

Adjective
comparativemore Formosan
superlativemost Formosan
Noun
pluralFormosans

Origin of Formosan

From Formosa + -an.

Words formed from Formosan

Phrases with Formosan

Questions about Formosan

What does Formosan mean?
Formosan means of or relating to Formosa.
What part of speech is Formosan?
Formosan can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near Formosan in the dictionary

  1. formonitrile
  2. formononetin
  3. Formosa
  4. Formosa Strait
  5. Formosa Straits
  6. Formosan
  7. Formosan termite
  8. Formosan termites
  9. Formosan wood mice
  10. Formosan wood mouse
  11. Formosans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Formosan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Formosan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/formosan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.