mana

[ mah-nah ]

noun

1. Anthropology. a generalized, supernatural force or power, which may be concentrated in objects or people.
2. Games. a finite supply of magic or magic points that is depleted with every spell cast by a magic-wielding player character in a video game, role-playing game, collectible card game, trading card game, etc., and that is slowly replenished with rest or quickly restored by certain items, like potions:

   This tank needs to slow his roll—the healer is out of mana.

mana

/ ˈmɑːnə /

noun

1. (in Polynesia, Melanesia, etc) a concept of a life force, believed to be seated in the head, and associated with high social status and ritual power
2. any power achieved by ritual means; prestige; authority

Word History and Origins

Origin of mana¹

First recorded in 1835–45; from a Polynesian language, e.g., Maori, Hawaian mana “power, psychic power, authority, control”

Word History and Origins

Origin of mana¹

from Polynesian

Example Sentences

Melissa Cheyney, chief author of the pro-home-birth MANA study, calls the Cornell methodology “misleading.”

From The Daily Beast

Government spokesman Nasser al-Mana'a insisted the government had no choice but to attack and had used proportionate violence.

From The Daily Beast

This consists of "getting up" a memorial to some distinguished mana statue, it may be, or modest bust.

From Project Gutenberg

May your mana never be less;—long may you hold at bay the demon of civilization, though fall at last I fear you must.

From Project Gutenberg

A chief of very high rank, standing, and mana, was on a war expedition; with him were about five hundred men.

From Project Gutenberg

If the reader has not some faint notion of mana by this time, I can't help it: I can't do any better for him.

From Project Gutenberg

But mind you do not translate mana as power; that won't do: they are two different things entirely.

From Project Gutenberg