pontianak
pontianak noun: a female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology, said to be the spirit of a woman who died while pregnant. Also the alternative form of pontianac.
Noun
pontianak (countable and uncountable, plural pontianaks)
- A female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology, said to be the spirit of a woman who died while pregnant.
- One of the most fearsome creatures of Malay folklore is the pontianak.2009, Andrew Hock-Soon Ng, “"Death and the Maide": The Pontianak as Excess in Malay Popular Culture”, in John Edgar Browning, Caroline Joan Picart, editors, Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead...
Proper noun capitalized: Pontianak
Pontianak
- The capital and largest city of West Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Also used as
pontianak is also the alternative form of pontianac.
Forms of pontianak
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | pontianaks |
| Proper noun | |
| alternative form | Pontianac |
Origin of pontianak
Borrowed from Malay puntianak.
From Indonesian Pontianak, named for the pontianaks which were popularly thought to have once inhabited the site.
Questions about pontianak
- What does pontianak mean?
- Pontianak means a female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology, said to be the spirit of a woman who died while pregnant.
- What part of speech is pontianak?
- Pontianak can be a noun or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of pontianak?
- The plural of pontianak is pontianaks.
Words near pontianak in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pontianak (page history and authors); Pontianak (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “pontianak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pontianak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.