Word.ws English Dictionary

wharepuni

UK/ˌwɑːɹeɪˈpuːni/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/ˌfʌreˈpʉni/

wharepuni noun: a large building in Maori communities for communal sleeping or for group meetings; a meeting house.

Noun

wharepuni (plural wharepuni or wharepunis)

  1. (New Zealand) A large building in Maori communities for communal sleeping or for group meetings; a meeting house.
    • The dwellings of the chiefs are surrounded with enclosures of pole-fences; and the Whares and Wharepunis, some of them exhibiting very fine specimens of the Maori order of architecture, are ornamented with grotesque wood-carvings.1867, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, translated by Edward Sauter, “Ngawhas, and Puias; boiling springs, solfataras and fumaroles”, in New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History […]...
    • A notable recent event was the construction of a fourth wharepuni. These wharepuni are in themselves fully fledged meeting-houses, although the decoration inside is simple, in accordance with their function as dormitories.1954, Forefront: A Monthly Survey of New Zealand Affairs, volumes 1–5, London: High Commissioner for New Zealand in the United Kingdom, page 19, column 3

Forms of wharepuni

pluralwharepuni
pluralwharepunis

Origin of wharepuni

From Māori wharepuni.

Questions about wharepuni

What does wharepuni mean?
Wharepuni means a large building in Maori communities for communal sleeping or for group meetings; a meeting house.
What part of speech is wharepuni?
Wharepuni is a noun.
How do you pronounce wharepuni?
Wharepuni is pronounced /ˌfʌreˈpʉni/ (New Zealand).
What is the plural of wharepuni?
The plural of wharepuni is wharepuni.

Words near wharepuni in the dictionary

  1. whare
  2. whare wānanga
  3. wharekai
  4. wharenui
  5. wharenuis
  6. wharepuni
  7. wharepunis
  8. whares
  9. wharf
  10. wharf borer
  11. wharf borers

Source and license

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