Taboo
nounA social or religious prohibition against discussing, touching, or doing something.
How to spell taboo
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce taboo
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does taboo mean?
- nounA social or religious prohibition against discussing, touching, or doing something.
- adjectiveProhibited or strongly disapproved of by social custom.
Taboo in a sentence
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noun
Discussing salaries openly is still a taboo in many offices.
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adjective
The subject of money remained taboo at every dinner she hosted.
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noun
The documentary explored a cultural taboo that few people dared to mention.
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adjective
Certain words were considered taboo in the polite company of that era.
Where does taboo come from?
Language of origin: Other
Taboo entered English directly from Tongan, a Polynesian language, where 'tabu' meant something forbidden, sacred, or set apart from ordinary use. The word was recorded and popularised by the British explorer Captain James Cook, who encountered the custom during his voyages through the Pacific islands in the 1770s and described it in his journals around 1777. In the original Polynesian sense, a thing that was tabu carried a kind of sacred prohibition: it could be holy and untouchable rather than merely rude or improper. English gradually broadened the meaning to cover anything banned or strongly discouraged by social convention, from forbidden topics to off-limits behaviour. The doubled 'o' at the end is an English spelling choice for the long 'oo' sound, which is the part most likely to trip up a writer, since the original word had a single 'u'.
How the word is built
- taboo (a single root borrowed whole from Tongan 'tabu', meaning forbidden or set apart; no English prefix or suffix)
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