Word.ws English Dictionary

kauri

/ˈkaʊɹi/

kauri noun: a conifer of the genus Agathis, found in Australasia and Melanesia, especially Agathis australis. Also the alternative form of cowrie.

Noun

kauri (countable and uncountable, plural kauris or kauri)

  1. (New Zealand) A conifer of the genus Agathis, found in Australasia and Melanesia, especially Agathis australis.
    • There is an ancient legend that if the kauris disappear from New Zealand, the Maoris will also disappear.1956, Frank Clune, Roaming round New Zealand: the story of a holiday trip
    • He had already kicked one panel of the stout door clean out. It was inch-thick kauri timber.1963, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow, Text Classics, published 2012, page 226
  2. The wood of the kauri tree.
    • New Zealand kauri is employed, principally for planking and decking1926, The Timberman, volume 28, page 38
  3. A resinous product of the kauri tree, found in the form of yellow or brown lumps in the ground where the trees have grown. It is used for making varnish, and as a substitute for amber.

Also used as

kauri is also the alternative form of cowrie.

Forms of kauri

pluralkauris
pluralkauri

Origin of kauri

Borrowed from Māori kauri from Proto-Polynesian *kauquli, from *kau (“tree”) + *quli (“black”), originally referring to Samoan ebony ("Diospyros samoensis").

Words formed from kauri

Phrases with kauri

Questions about kauri

What does kauri mean?
Kauri means a conifer of the genus Agathis, found in Australasia and Melanesia, especially Agathis australis.
What part of speech is kauri?
Kauri is a noun.
How do you pronounce kauri?
Kauri is pronounced /ˈkaʊɹi/.
What is the plural of kauri?
The plural of kauri is kauris.

Words near kauri in the dictionary

  1. kaurenes
  2. kaurenoic
  3. kaurenoic acid
  4. kaurenoid
  5. kaurenoids
  6. kauri
  7. kauri grass
  8. kauri gum
  9. kauri pine
  10. kauri pines
  11. kauri-butanol value

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kauri (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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