papalagi
papalagi noun: in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand, a white person; a palagi.
Noun
papalagi (plural papalagis or papalagi)
- In Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand, a white person; a palagi.
- Yet those whom the Tongas called papalangi, or men from the sky, introduced into these islands a new language of politics, class and organisation.2020, Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South, William Collins, published 2021, page 53
Forms of papalagi
| plural | papalagis |
|---|---|
| plural | papalagi |
| alternative form | papalangi |
Origin of papalagi
From Samoan papālagi, Tongan papālagi. Compare palagi.
Questions about papalagi
- What does papalagi mean?
- Papalagi means in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand, a white person; a palagi.
- What part of speech is papalagi?
- Papalagi is a noun.
- What is the plural of papalagi?
- The plural of papalagi is papalagis.
Words near papalagi in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: papalagi (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: “papalagi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/papalagi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.