Maori

How to spell maori

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce maori

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maori mean?

1. nounA member of the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, or this people collectively.
2. nounThe Eastern Polynesian language of the indigenous people of New Zealand.
3. adjectiveRelating to the indigenous people of New Zealand, their language, or their culture.

Maori in a sentence

• noun

  The museum exhibition traced the early settlement of the maori across New Zealand.

• noun

  She enrolled in an evening class to learn maori alongside her colleagues.

• adjective

  The carving showed a traditional maori design passed down for generations.

• noun

  Many maori today live in cities while keeping strong ties to their tribal land.

• noun

  Public signs in New Zealand are often printed in both English and maori.

• adjective

  The festival celebrated maori song, dance, and storytelling.

Where does maori come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word comes directly from te reo Māori, the Polynesian language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, where 'maori' originally meant 'normal', 'ordinary', or 'natural'. The term was used to distinguish ordinary human beings, the everyday and the earthly, from the gods, spirits, and supernatural beings of myth, so calling someone Māori first marked them simply as a mortal person. When European settlers arrived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the indigenous people adopted the word to describe themselves collectively, setting their own identity apart from the newcomers. English took the word in during the early 1800s and kept the original Polynesian spelling almost untouched, which is why the unfamiliar 'ao' vowel run looks so unlike a native English word. In its home language the first vowel carries a macron, written 'Māori' to mark a long vowel, and that macron is frequently dropped in plain English text, which is the detail most writers stumble over.

How the word is built

• maori (a single root word from the Māori language; not built from English prefixes or suffixes)