Word.ws English Dictionary

Nusantara

Nusantara proper noun: a region of Southeast Asia: generally used to refer to Maritime Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines.

Proper noun

Nusantara

  1. A region of Southeast Asia: generally used to refer to Maritime Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines.
  2. (Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore) An archipelago of Southeast Asia: Malay Archipelago or the Malay world.
  3. (Indonesia) Indonesian Archipelago, the islands comprising the country of Indonesia or to the geographical groups which include its islands.
  4. (Indonesia) A country in Southeast Asia: Endonym for the Republic of Indonesia, including everything contained within it (i.e., covering the regions, people, cultures, languages, etc.).
  5. The planned capital city of Indonesia in East Kalimantan, on Borneo.
    • The de jure capital city of Indonesia is Nusantara, located in the eastern coast of Kalimantan island.
  6. (archaic, historical) A region of Southeast Asia. The conquered territories of the Majapahit empire, corresponding to present-day Indonesia (main) and several Southeast Asian countries.

Origin of Nusantara

From Indonesian and Malay Nusantara, ultimately from Old Javanese nūsāntara (“the outer islands”).

Words formed from Nusantara

Questions about Nusantara

What does Nusantara mean?
Nusantara means a region of Southeast Asia: generally used to refer to Maritime Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines.
What part of speech is Nusantara?
Nusantara is a proper noun.

Words near Nusantara in the dictionary

  1. nusachs
  2. Nusairi
  3. Nusairian
  4. Nusairis
  5. Nusakan
  6. Nusantara
  7. Nusantaran
  8. NUSAS
  9. Nusaybin
  10. Nusayri
  11. Nusayri-Alawi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Nusantara (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: “Nusantara.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nusantara. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.