Word.ws English Dictionary

kapu

kapu noun: taboo, especially in Hawaiian contexts.

Noun (1)

kapu (plural kapu or kapus)

  1. Taboo, especially in Hawaiian contexts.
    • The operation of taboos – or kapu – kept society ordered, quite cruelly on occasion.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 43

Noun (2) capitalized: Kapu

Kapu (plural Kapus)

  1. A member of a caste of agriculturists found primarily in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Forms of kapu

pluralkapu
pluralkapus
pluralKapus

Plural of kapu: kapu or kapus

Origin of kapu

From Hawaiian kapu, from Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu, from Proto-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian *tambu. Doublet of taboo.

Phrases with kapu

Questions about kapu

What does kapu mean?
Kapu means taboo, especially in Hawaiian contexts.
What part of speech is kapu?
Kapu is a noun.
What is the plural of kapu?
The plural of kapu is kapu.

Words near kapu in the dictionary

  1. Kaprije
  2. kapt
  3. Kaptol
  4. kapton
  5. Kaptur
  6. kapu
  7. kapuka
  8. kapukas
  9. Kapur
  10. Kapur-Toriello syndrome
  11. Kapurs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kapu (page history and authors); Kapu (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “kapu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kapu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.