Word.ws English Dictionary

pooi

pooi is the obsolete form of poi.

Meaning of poi

Noun (1)

poi (uncountable)

  1. (Hawaii) The traditional staple food of Hawaii, made by baking and pounding the kalo (or taro) root, and reducing it to a thin paste, which is allowed to ferment.
    • It was a far cry from the traditional Hawaiian feast, which always included the beloved poi, a purplish paste made from pounded taro root […].2012, Julia Flynn Siler, Lost Kingdom, Grove Press, page 104
  2. A creamy Samoan dessert of ripe bananas mashed with coconut cream.

Noun (2)

poi (countable and uncountable, plural poi or pois)

  1. (New Zealand) A small ball made of leaves and fibres, attached to a string.
    • Warriors formerly used poi actions to maintain wrist flexibility, but poi have developed as a women's dance. Classic poi dances and songs are reputed to have been those of the people of the Taranaki, Rotorua, and Whanganui tribal areas, but poi are now performed everywhere in Aotearoa.2008, Ellen Koskoff, “Haka poi”, in The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Routledge, →ISBN, page 738
  2. (New Zealand) A traditional dance performed by Maori women involving the rhythmic swinging of such a ball.

Questions about pooi

What is pooi the obsolete form of?
Pooi is the obsolete form of poi.

Words near pooi in the dictionary

  1. poohpoohed
  2. poohpoohing
  3. poohpoohs
  4. poohs
  5. Poohsticks
  6. pooi
  7. pooid
  8. pooids
  9. pooie
  10. pooier
  11. pooiest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pooi (page history and authors); poi (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.

Last updated:

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