kōwhai

See also: kowhai

Maori

Etymology

Cognate with Hawaiian 'ōhai (“Sesbania tomentosa”), Tahitian ofai (“Sesbania grandiflora”) and South Marquesan kohai (“Caesalpinia pulcherrima”) from Proto-Polynesian *kōfai.[1]

Sense of colour from its flower petals, displaced whero entirely (now meaning “red”) and renga partially.[2]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kɔːɸai/

Noun

kōwhai

  1. Any of several small woody legume trees in the genus Sophora native to New Zealand that have yellow flowers. The national flower of New Zealand.
  2. yellow
    Synonym: renga

See also

Colors in Maori · ngā tae (layout · text)
     tea, mā      kiwikiwi      pango
             mea, kura, whero              karaka; parauri              kōwhai, renga
                          kāriki, kākāriki              kārikiuri
                          kikorangi              kahurangi
             tūāuri              waiporoporo              māwhero

References

  1. ^ “Kōfai”, in Te Māra Reo: The Language Garden‎[1], Benton Family Trust, 2022
  2. ^ Dodgson, Neil, Chen, Victoria, Zahido, Meimuna (November 2024) “The colonisation of the colour pink: variation and change in Māori’s colour lexicon”, in Linguistics, →DOI, pages 14-15, 23-4
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.