kahawai

Borrowed from Maori kahawai.

kahawai (plural kahawais)

1. (New Zealand) An edible marine fish, Arripis trutta, found around the southeastern coast of Australia and New Zealand, having a dark bluish-green body with indistinct rows of spots forming narrow irregular bands on the upper sides.
   • 2003, Michael King, The Penguin History of Aotearoa New Zealand, Penguin, published 2023, page 168:

     Māori oratory of those years began to employ proverbs about […] the propensity of the kahawai for devouring the mullet.

• Australian salmon

From kaha (“place”) +‎ wai (“water”).

kahawai

1. stream, creek
2. ravine, gulch

• palai kahawai (“swamp fern”)

• kahawai in Combined Hawaiian Dictionary, at trussel2.com.

From Proto-Polynesian *kafa (“diamond-scaled mullet”) +‎ wai (“water”). The first element is cognate with Hawaiian ʻaha (“needlefish”), Tokelauan kafa (“diamond-scaled mullet”).

kahawai

1. kahawai (edible ocean fish)

• → English: kahawai

• “kahawai” in John C. Moorfield, Te Aka: Maori–English, English–Maori Dictionary and Index, 3rd edition, Longman/Pearson Education New Zealand, 2011, →ISBN.