Kupang

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The port capital of East Nusa Tenggara province on the island of Timor in Indonesia ; a small silver or tin coin once used in parts of the Malay world
2. A seaport city on the western end of Timor island in Indonesia ; a small coin formerly circulated in Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies region
3. The main city on the Indonesian part of Timor island serving as a provincial capital ; an old small-denomination coin used across the Malay Archipelago

Etymology: Kupang is the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province, on the western tip of the island of Timor in Indonesia. The name was taken into English directly from Indonesian, which is why it reads as a straightforward place name rather than an adapted English term. It is the kind of word an English speaker is most likely to meet on a map or in a news story about the region, where it sits as the main port and administrative centre for the western half of Timor. Because the word is a proper noun borrowed whole from Indonesian, its meaning is simply the name of the city itself. It is not a common noun with a shifted sense, and it has no separate English history beyond that borrowing.