Word.ws English Dictionary

tohunga

tohunga noun: a Māori chosen to be a specialist in a specific skilled field; especially, a priest.

Noun

tohunga (plural tohungas)

  1. (New Zealand) A Māori chosen to be a specialist in a specific skilled field; especially, a priest.
    • Those who became tohunga did so not simply voluntarily, but because they displayed aptitudes at an early age which indicated to their elders that they had been chosen by deities to perform particular functions […].2003, Michael King, The Penguin History of Aotearoa New Zealand, Penguin, published 2023, page 68

Forms of tohunga

pluraltohungas

Origin of tohunga

From Māori tohunga (“skilled person, chosen expert, priest, healer”).

Words formed from tohunga

Questions about tohunga

What does tohunga mean?
Tohunga means a Māori chosen to be a specialist in a specific skilled field; especially, a priest.
What part of speech is tohunga?
Tohunga is a noun.
What is the plural of tohunga?
The plural of tohunga is tohungas.

Words near tohunga in the dictionary

  1. Tohono O'odham
  2. Tohopekaliga
  3. tohorah
  4. tohu-bohu
  5. tohubohu
  6. tohunga
  7. tohungaism
  8. tohungas
  9. tohutō
  10. TOI
  11. toi, toi, toi

Source and license

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