piʻa

Rarotongan

Etymology

From Proto-Eastern Polynesian *piha (compare with Tahitian piha “chamber or room, chest”, Tuamotuan piha “room”) from Proto-Polynesian *pusa (compare with Tuamotuan puha “water barrel, box”, Samoan pusa, Tongan pusa);[1] proposed as a borrowing of Dutch bus from Tongan contact with Jacob Le Maire's and Willem Schouten's ships during exploration for the Dutch East India Company in April 1616.[2] (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

piʻa

  1. box or any similar container
  2. compartment
  3. room

References

  1. ^ Ross Clark and Simon J. Greenhill, editors (2011), “pusa”, in “POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online”, in Oceanic Linguistics, volume 50, number 2, pages 551-559
  2. ^ Geraghty, Paul, Tent, Jan (June 1997) “Early Dutch Loanwords in Polynesia”, in The Journal of the Polynesian Society‎[1], volume 106, number 2, pages 141-5
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