Word.ws English Dictionary

tupuna

tupuna noun: an ancestor, especially a grandparent, in Maori culture.

Noun

tupuna (plural tupunas or tupuna or tūpuna)

  1. (New Zealand) An ancestor, especially a grandparent, in Maori culture.
    • […] tupunas are there, beside us, in the rain, and when the sun comes busting out.1998, Janet Hunt, Hone Tuwhare: A Biography, page 139
    • We have carved the journeys of the adventures of our tūpuna, who were true navigators—venturing into the unknown—sailing towards the sun.2015 June 1, Chellie Spiller, Rachel Wolfgramm, Indigenous Spiritualities at Work: Transforming the Spirit of Enterprise, IAP, →ISBN, page 253

Forms of tupuna

pluraltupunas
pluraltupuna
pluraltūpuna
alternative formtipuna

Origin of tupuna

Borrowed from Māori tupuna.

Questions about tupuna

What does tupuna mean?
Tupuna means an ancestor, especially a grandparent, in Maori culture.
What part of speech is tupuna?
Tupuna is a noun.
What is the plural of tupuna?
The plural of tupuna is tupunas.

Words near tupuna in the dictionary

  1. tuppings
  2. tups
  3. Tupsley
  4. tupstroside
  5. Tupton
  6. tupuna
  7. tupunas
  8. Tupungato
  9. tupuxuarid
  10. tupuxuarids
  11. Tupy

Source and license

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