madagascar
/mædəˈɡæskɑɹ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.39 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
An island and country off the east coast of Africa. Official name: Republic of Madagascar. Capital: Antananarivo.
Example Sentences
- "Malagasy, like many indigenous languages in the Global South, has few formal language resources. When Jagwar – born in Madagascar — discovered Wiktionary as a teenager, he saw an opportunity to correct this."
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French Madagascar, from Madageiscar, popularly reputed as a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu by Marco Polo's misreading of Arabic. The maps of particular interest are that of al-Idrisi in the 12th century, who produced the Tabula Rogeriana, the most advanced world map at the time. The actual misconstrued term was Arabic جَزِيرَة المَالَائِيّ (jazīrat al-mālāʔiyy, “The Island of Mālāī”) listed alongside Arabic جَزِيرَة القَمَر (jazīrat al-qamar, “The Island of the Moon”) which lent its name to Comoros; Madagascar however likely being the original based on its dimensions. The map in question warps the direction of Africa's east coast to be parallel to the coast of southeast Asia, prompting a conflation of the regions furthest east and furthest south, in the reaches of Arab exploration. This perhaps makes the Island of Mālāī both representing Madagascar and an island in Indonesia, likely Sumatra, in close proximity to Malaysia. To conflate matters further, the populations of both regions are of Austronesian background, a fact pointed out by Arab explorers who identified Madagascar as colony of the former region. A second wave of Austronesians, including Malays, did indeed migrate to the island after the first group had originally left from what was likely Southern Borneo from linguistic and genetic analysis. "Mālāī-Gezīra" also holds connection to the term for the people and languages of the island, Malagasy, which had earlier forms Malegass and Madegass, because of dialect division.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: Madagascar, جَزِيرَة المَالَائِيّ
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /mædəˈɡæskɑɹ/
- British English: /mædəˈɡæskə/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Madagascar bean
Madagascar hissing cockroach
Madagascar jasmine
Madagascar plum
Madagascar yellowbrow
Countries of the world
Frequently Paired Words
Countries of the world