Word.ws English Dictionary

kowrie

kowrie is the alternative spelling of kauri.

kowrie is the alternative spelling of cowrie.

Meaning of kauri

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
  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.

Meaning of cowrie

Noun

cowrie (plural cowries)

  1. A small gastropod (Monetaria moneta, syn. Cypraea moneta) common in the Indian Ocean; its shell.
    Synonyms:
    money cowrie, shell money, wampum
  2. (broadly, dated) Any gastropod of the genus Cypraea; its shell.
  3. (broadly) Any gastropod of the family Cypraeidae; its shell.

Forms of kowrie

pluralkowries

Questions about kowrie

What is kowrie the alternative spelling of?
Kowrie is the alternative spelling of kauri.

Words near kowrie in the dictionary

  1. Kowloon Tsai
  2. Kowloonside
  3. kowls
  4. Kowohl
  5. Kowoll
  6. kowrie
  7. kowtow
  8. kowtowed
  9. kowtower
  10. kowtowers
  11. kowtowing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kowrie (page history and authors); kauri (page history and authors); cowrie (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: “kowrie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kowrie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.