Word.ws English Dictionary

palau

/pəˈlaʊ/

palau is the alternative spelling of pilaf.

Meaning of pilaf

Noun

pilaf (countable and uncountable, plural pilafs)

  1. A dish made by browning grain, typically rice, in oil and then cooking it with a seasoned broth, to which meat and/or vegetables may be added.
    • My spirits rose as I passed among the tents and savored the aroma of steaming pots of pilaf and the long skewers of shashlyk roasting over the open fires.1952, Cothburn O’Neal, chapter 1, in Master of the World (Avon; N158), New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, published 1967, →OCLC, book 1, page 17

Proper noun capitalized: Palau

Palau

  1. A country consisting of around 340 islands in Micronesia, in Oceania. Official name: Republic of Palau. Capital: Ngerulmud.
    • Another society in which wealth per se was highly valued was Palau, but wealth belonging to descent units and not to individuals.[…]
    • Palau society was divided into a large number of individually named, exogamous matriclans, and these were in turn subdivided into named matrilineages, each of which was a land-owning corporation and localized within a single community.1989, Douglas L. Oliver, “Social Relations”, in Native Cultures of the Pacific Islands, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 146

Forms of palau

pluralpalaus

Origin of palau

Borrowed from Palauan Belau (“Palau”), traditionally derived from aidebelau (“indirect replies”) in reference to the island's creation story, or from beluu (“village”), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *banua (“inhabited land, territory”).

Words formed from palau

Phrases with palau

Words that rhyme with palau

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about palau

What does palau mean?
Palau means a country consisting of around 340 islands in Micronesia, in Oceania. Official name: Republic of Palau. Capital: Ngerulmud.
What is palau the alternative spelling of?
Palau is the alternative spelling of pilaf.
What part of speech is palau?
Palau is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce palau?
Palau is pronounced /pəˈlaʊ/ (UK).

Words near palau in the dictionary

  1. palatovelars
  2. palatschinke
  3. palatschinken
  4. Palatua
  5. Palatucci
  6. palau
  7. Palauan
  8. Palauan time
  9. Palauans
  10. Palauig
  11. Palaung

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: palau (page history and authors); Palau (page history and authors); pilaf (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-Palau.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Soundguys-Palau.wav.

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