nakamal
nakamal noun: a traditional meeting house or gathering place in Vanuatu, used for community meetings, ceremonies, and the drinking of kava.
Noun
nakamal (plural nakamals)
- A traditional meeting house or gathering place in Vanuatu, used for community meetings, ceremonies, and the drinking of kava.
- In many areas of Vanuatu, this is a large building that functions as a meeting house, while in the south, it is often a cleared area under a large banyan tree; there is often restricted access to a nakamal or certain parts of a nakamal affecting women and men of low status.2003, Crowley, Terry, A New Bislama Dictionary, 2nd edition, Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, →ISBN, page 174
Forms of nakamal
| plural | nakamals |
|---|
Origin of nakamal
Borrowed from Bislama nakamal, ultimately from a substrate language, such as Raga na gamali.
Questions about nakamal
- What does nakamal mean?
- Nakamal means a traditional meeting house or gathering place in Vanuatu, used for community meetings, ceremonies, and the drinking of kava.
- What part of speech is nakamal?
- Nakamal is a noun.
- What is the plural of nakamal?
- The plural of nakamal is nakamals.
Words near nakamal in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nakamal (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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