Word.ws English Dictionary

wahine

UK/wɑːˈhiːnɪ//wɑˈhineɪ/

wahine noun: a Polynesian or Maori woman.

Noun

wahine (plural wahines)

  1. A Polynesian or Maori woman.
    • I wanna be with all the kanes and wahines that I knew long ago1933, Tommy Harrison, Bill Cogswell, Johnny Noble, My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii
    • One Way Wahine was the next beach movie, after Ride the Wild Surf, to be filmed on the sands of Hawaii. It was marketed to the teenage audience as a beach movie but it is a more serious look at the seamy side of Hawaii and the surf bums and one way wahines who go there to make a quick buck.2005, Thomas Lisanti, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959–1969, McFarland & Company, page 224
  2. A female surfer.

Forms of wahine

pluralwahines

Origin of wahine

Borrowed from Māori wahine (“woman”), from Proto-Polynesian *fafine.

Words that rhyme with wahine

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wahine

What does wahine mean?
Wahine means a Polynesian or Maori woman.
What part of speech is wahine?
Wahine is a noun.
How do you pronounce wahine?
Wahine is pronounced /wɑːˈhiːnɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of wahine?
The plural of wahine is wahines.

Words near wahine in the dictionary

  1. Wahhabize
  2. Wahiawā
  3. Wahid
  4. Wahids
  5. Wahinda
  6. wahine
  7. wahines
  8. wahini
  9. wahinis
  10. Wahinix
  11. Wahiro

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wahine (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-wahine2.oga.

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