Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A country in the southwest Pacific Ocean east of Fiji comprising about 150 islands, some 36 of which are inhabited. Long inhabited by Polynesians, the islands were sighted by the Dutch in 1616 and visited by the British navigator Capt. James Cook, who named them “The Friendly Islands” in the late 1700s. It became a British protectorate in 1900 and gained independence as a constitutional monarchy in 1970. Nuku'alofa is the capital and the largest city.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A mixture of several barks said to consist principally of Premna Taitensis and Epiprennum mirabile: used by the Fiji Islanders as an antineuralgic. It has been introduced into the United States.
  • noun A light two-wheeled vehicle with wooden axletrees, drawn by ponies or oxen, and much used on the up-country roads in British India.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) A drug useful in neuralgia, derived from a Fijian plant supposed to be of the aroid genus Epipremnum.
  • noun India A kind of light two-wheeled vehicle, usually for four persons, drawn by ponies or bullocks.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A country in Oceania. Official name: Kingdom of Tonga.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a monarchy on a Polynesian archipelago in the South Pacific; achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1970
  • noun the language of the Tongan people of south central Africa (Zambia and Rhodesia)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Tongan Tonga, from Samoan toga ("southern").

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Examples

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  • Joins East Timor ('east east') as being a country whose name is a cardinal direction.

    January 17, 2024