Word.ws English Dictionary

tikanga

UK/ˈtiːkaŋə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/ˈtikʌŋʌ/

tikanga noun: a custom, value or principle, especially of the Maori people.

Noun

tikanga (countable and uncountable, plural tikangas or tikanga)

  1. (New Zealand) A custom, value or principle, especially of the Maori people.
    • Male primogeniture was still the concept most often ratified by tikanga.2003, Michael King, The Penguin History of Aotearoa New Zealand, Penguin, published 2023, page 236

Forms of tikanga

pluraltikangas
pluraltikanga

Origin of tikanga

Borrowed from Māori tikanga.

Words formed from tikanga

Questions about tikanga

What does tikanga mean?
Tikanga means a custom, value or principle, especially of the Maori people.
What part of speech is tikanga?
Tikanga is a noun.
How do you pronounce tikanga?
Tikanga is pronounced /ˈtikʌŋʌ/ (New Zealand).
What is the plural of tikanga?
The plural of tikanga is tikangas.

Words near tikanga in the dictionary

  1. tikals
  2. tikam
  3. tikam tikam
  4. tikam-tikam
  5. Tikamgarh
  6. tikanga
  7. tikanga Maori
  8. tikangas
  9. tikas
  10. Tikay
  11. tike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tikanga (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: “tikanga.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tikanga. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.