Word.ws English Dictionary

palenque

palenque noun: a community of runaway slaves.

Noun

palenque (plural palenques)

  1. (historical) A community of runaway slaves.
    • Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.2007 October 18, Simon Romero, “A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes”, in New York Times

Proper noun capitalized: Palenque

Palenque

  1. Any of several towns in Latin America; most famously, a Maya site in Chiapas, Mexico.

Forms of palenque

pluralpalenques

Origin of palenque

From Spanish Palenque, the name of a maroon settlement in Colombia, from palenque (“palisade”).

From Spanish Palenque, from palenque (“palisade”).

Questions about palenque

What does palenque mean?
Palenque means a community of runaway slaves.
What part of speech is palenque?
Palenque can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of palenque?
The plural of palenque is palenques.

Words near palenque in the dictionary

  1. palenka
  2. palenkas
  3. palenkeen
  4. palenkeens
  5. Paleno
  6. palenque
  7. palenqueen
  8. palenqueens
  9. Palenquero
  10. palenques
  11. palenquin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: palenque (page history and authors); Palenque (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: “palenque.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/palenque. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.