wantok

Syllables: wan·tok/ˈwɒntɒk/US/ˈwɑntɑk/

wantok noun: a close comrade; a person with whom one has a strong social bond, usually based on a shared language.

Noun

wantok (plural wantoks)

(Papua-New-Guinea, sometimes, term-of-address) A close comrade; a person with whom one has a strong social bond, usually based on a shared language.
- I refer to the classes of settlers thus distinguished as ‘wantok’ (although their members did not always have the same mother tongue), and the areas from which they came as ‘home areas’. […] There were 7 groups of wantok among the Situm block-holders and 4 among the Gobari holders.1971, A[nton] Ploeg, The Situm and Gobari Ex-servicemen’s Settlements, Canberra, A.C.T.: New Guinea Research Unit, Australian National University, →ISBN, page 23
- In Saraga, there are more wantoks (3.16) per household than in Bumbu (2.7). […] Like Bumbu, almost 80 percent approves of their wantoks living with them but half of the respondents would not like to see an increase in the wantoks in their houses.1989, Ramesh Manadhar, Lohia Henao, “The Role of ‘Wantok’ in Housing the Squatters in Papua New Guinea”, in Vitor Abrantes, Oktay Ural, editors, Innovative Housing Practices: Better Housing through...

If one steals or cheats to help a wantok one feels not guilty or one might feel ethically obliged to fight to support a wantok without considering whether the wantok is right or wrong.1990, Jeanette Conway, Ennio Mantovani, Marriage in Melanesia: A Sociological Perspective (Point Series; no. 15), Goroka, Papua New Guinea...
In fact, because the RSL township was to be constructed on a seemingly empty plain, BAI could plan it to minimize these wantok ties and the paybacks such ties were thought to generate.2004, Frederick [Karl] Errington, Deborah [B.] Gewertz, “The Peopling of a Place and the Placing of People”, in Yali’s Question: Sugar...
A major impact in almost every area of life for Solomon Islanders is their safety nets: households, families, and importantly, the wantok (literally meaning "one talk") system.2013, A. B. Andersen, S. H. Thilsted, A. M. Schwartz, “Food Diversity”, in Food and Nutrition Security in Solomon Islands (Working Paper...

plural	wantoks

Borrowed from Tok Pisin wantok, from English one talk, that is, a speaker of the same language.

What does wantok mean?: Wantok means a close comrade; a person with whom one has a strong social bond, usually based on a shared language.
How do you use wantok in a sentence?: If one steals or cheats to help a wantok one feels not guilty or one might feel ethically obliged to fight to support a wantok without considering whether the wantok is right or wrong.
What part of speech is wantok?: Wantok is a noun.
How do you pronounce wantok?: Wantok is pronounced /ˈwɒntɒk/ (UK).
What is the plural of wantok?: The plural of wantok is wantoks.

Adapted from Wiktionary: wantok (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-wantok.wav.

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