pūngāwerewere

Maori

Etymology

Cognate of Tahitian pūʻāverevere “cobweb” and Samoan ʻapogāleveleve from Proto-Nuclear Polynesian *puŋa-a-leveleve metathesizing Proto-Polynesian *puŋa-a-welewele[1] related to *ka-lewelewe (compare with Tongan kaleveleve) affixing *lewelewe possibly a cognate of *lawalawa ultimately from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *lawaq (compare with Malay labah-labah and Cebuano lawa)[2] – reinterpreted as compound of werewere reduplicate of were “to suspend, to hang”, and punga either from the belief of it as coming from the deity Punga or from pū “clump” referring to its many young.[3] or from punga meaning “lump”.

Noun

pūngāwerewere

  1. spider

References

  1. ^ Ross Clark and Simon J. Greenhill, editors (2011), “puga-a-werewere”, in “POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online”, in Oceanic Linguistics, volume 50, number 2, pages 551-559
  2. ^ Ross, Malcolm D. (2011) Andrew Pawley, editor, The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 4, Animals, Canberra: Australian National University, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 409; republished as Meredith Osmond, editor, (Please provide a date or year)
  3. ^ Mere Roberts (June 2013) “Ways of Seeing: Whakapapa”, in SITES‎[1], volume 10, number 1, →DOI, pages 102-3

Further reading

  • Williams, Herbert William (1917) “pūngāwerewere”, in A Dictionary of the Maori Language, page 361
  • “pūngāwerewere” in John C. Moorfield, Te Aka: Maori–English, English–Maori Dictionary and Index, 3rd edition, Longman/Pearson Education New Zealand, 2011, →ISBN.
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