Malayo-comb. form
1. Forming adjectives (and related nouns) with the sense ‘of or relating to the Malays and ——’, as Malayo-African, Malayo-Chinese, Malayo-European, Malayo-Indonesian, Malayo-Javanese, Malayo-Malagasy, Malayo-Melanesian, Malayo-Negrito, Malayo-Papuan, Malayo-Portuguese.
ΚΠ
1876 Encycl. Brit. V. 288/1 Their [sc. the Makasars'] language..belongs to the Malayo-Javanese group.
1879 A. H. Keane in A. R. Wallace Australasia 607 Papûans proper in the centre; Malayo-Papûans in the Indian Archipelago.
1887 A. Featherman Social Hist. Races Mankind II. i. 251 The Malayo-Melanesians are the most important branch of the Melanesian stock.
1896 A. H. Keane Ethnol. 285 The Negroid Malayo-Malagasy peoples of Madagascar.
1896 A. H. Keane Ethnol. 331 Semi-cultured and rude Malayo-African populations.
1896 A. H. Keane Ethnol. 333 The Philippine half-castes may be roughly classed as..Malayo-Indonesians, Malayo-Europeans, and Malayo-Chinese.
1909 Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. at Malayo- Malayo Negrito.
1934 R. C. Priebsch & W. E. Collinson German Lang. i. ii. 35 A Creolized language, in this case a blend called Malayo-Portuguese, which was used by the whites in dealing with slaves.
2.
Malayo-Polynesian adj. and n. 
/məˌleɪəʊpɒlᵻˈniːʒn/, /məˌleɪoʊˌpɑləˈniʃ(ə)n/ [compare French Malayo-polynésien (1864)] (a) adj. of or relating to the Malays and the Polynesians; spec. of or relating to the family of agglutinative languages including Malay and the Polynesian languages; (b) n. the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, a sub-grouping of the Austronesian family of languages.
Brit. /məˌleɪəʊpɒlᵻˈniːzjən/
, /məˌleɪəʊpɒlᵻˈniːzjən//məˌleɪəʊpɒlᵻˈniːʒn/U.S. /məˌleɪoʊˌpɑləˈniʒ(ə)n/
, /məˌleɪoʊˌpɑləˈniʒ(ə)n//məˌleɪoʊˌpɑləˈniʃ(ə)n/ΚΠ
1842 J. C. Prichard Nat. Hist. Man 327 I shall term these people the Malayo-Polynesian..race.
1878 in Trans. Philol. Soc. 303 The Malayo-Polynesian languages.
1878 in Trans. Philol. Soc. 426 There can be no doubt but the Malayo-Polynesians were separated from their congeners in the Indian Archipelago before these influences affected the Malay language.
1880 A. H. Sayce Introd. Sci. of Lang. II. viii. 188 The agglutinated adjuncts..may be almost wholly dispensed with, as in Malayo-Polynesian.
1933 L. Bloomfield Lang. iv. 71 Some scholars believe both the Munda and the Mon-Khmer families to be related to the Malayo-Polynesian family (forming the so-called Austric family of languages).
1988 Trans. Philol. Soc. 86 74 His chapter on the comparative method in Language..draws further exemplification from comparative Malayo-polynesian and from comparative Algonkian.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2000; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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comb. form1842