spice islands

1. 1.

   a group of island in eastern Indonesia between Celebes and New Guinea; settled by the Portuguese but taken by the Dutch who made them the center for a spice monopoly, at which time they were known as Spice Islands

   SynonymsMoluccas

   Broaderisland

   Part ofIndonesia

Questions about spice islands

What does spice islands mean?

spice islands means "a group of island in eastern Indonesia between Celebes and New Guinea; settled by the Portuguese but taken by the Dutch who made them the center for a spice monopoly, at which time they were known as Spice Islands".

What is another word for spice islands?

Close synonyms include Moluccas. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is spice islands a common word?

spice islands is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.