Word.ws English Dictionary

Proto-Malay

Proto-Malay noun: an Austronesian speaker who moved from mainland Asia to the Malay peninsula and Malay archipelago in a long series of migrations between 2500 and 1500 BC, before that of the Deutero-Malays about a thousand years later.

Noun

Proto-Malay (plural Proto-Malays)

  1. (historical) An Austronesian speaker who moved from mainland Asia to the Malay peninsula and Malay archipelago in a long series of migrations between 2500 and 1500 BC, before that of the Deutero-Malays about a thousand years later.

Forms of Proto-Malay

pluralProto-Malays

Origin of Proto-Malay

From proto- + Malay.

Questions about Proto-Malay

What does Proto-Malay mean?
Proto-Malay means an Austronesian speaker who moved from mainland Asia to the Malay peninsula and Malay archipelago in a long series of migrations between 2500 and 1500 BC, before that of the Deutero-Malays about a thousand years later.
What part of speech is Proto-Malay?
Proto-Malay is a noun.
What is the plural of Proto-Malay?
The plural of Proto-Malay is Proto-Malays.

Words near Proto-Malay in the dictionary

  1. Proto-Koreanic
  2. proto-language
  3. proto-languages
  4. proto-Macro-Somali
  5. proto-magnesium
  6. Proto-Malay
  7. Proto-Malayic
  8. Proto-Malayo-Chamic
  9. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian
  10. Proto-Malayo-Sumbawan
  11. Proto-Malays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Proto-Malay (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: “Proto-Malay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/proto-malay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.