Word.ws English Dictionary

marai

marai is the alternative spelling of marae.

Meaning of marae

Noun

marae (plural maraes)

  1. (New Zealand) The courtyard of a Maori wharenui or meeting-house, seen as a cultural and spiritual focal point.
  2. (broadly) The buildings and people around it; a spiritual or cultural centre.
  3. (dated) A Polynesian sacred altar or enclosure.
    • The path ended down by the sea at a crumbling ‘ingot’ of black coral, twenty yards in length & in height two men. ‘A marae, this is called,’ Mr Wagstaff informed me. ‘All over the South Seas you see ’em, I’m told.’2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN

Forms of marai

pluralmarais

Questions about marai

What is marai the alternative spelling of?
Marai is the alternative spelling of marae.

Words near marai in the dictionary

  1. Maragondon
  2. Maragongdong
  3. marah
  4. marahs
  5. Marahuan
  6. marai
  7. marais
  8. Marais des Cygnes
  9. maraises
  10. Maraj
  11. Marajs

Source and license

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