Melanesian

From Melanesia +‎ -an.

Melanesian (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to Melanesia.
   • 2002, William C. Miller, Long Pig:

     While Melanesian cannibals make "long pig," barbecuing enemies, legal and political cannibals in San Francisco put a beautiful wealthy woman, Penny Penny Hill, on trial for murder […]

Melanesian (plural Melanesians)

1. A Melanesian person.
   • 2008, Andrew David Grainger, The Browning of the All Blacks: Pacific Peoples, Rugby, and the Cultural Politics of Identity in New Zealand‎^[1], page 326:

     Blackbirding was the euphemism given to the slave-trading that occurred in the Pacific from the mid-1800s through to the early-1900s. According to one study, blackbirding, [as] “the practice of luring Melanesians and Polynesians to toil for next to nothing was called”, involved upwards of 60,000 people between 1863 and 1904 (Horne, 2007, p. 2).

• Melanesia