atua
Britishnoun
Etymology
Origin of atua
Māori
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The objects of worship among the Tahitians, next to the atua or gods, were the oramatuas tiis or spirits.
From The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Vol. II by Frazer, James George, Sir
The Society-Islanders had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be "of equal antiquity with the atua fauau po, or night-born gods."
From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Thoreau, Henry David
But though "god" is the nearest English equivalent of the word atua, we must beware of assuming that the Maori idea of godhead coincided with ours.
From The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Vol. II by Frazer, James George, Sir
He, and other 'original gods' of his making, are carefully and absolutely discriminated from the atua, which are 'the human soul after its separation from the body.'
From The Making of Religion by Lang, Andrew
Among themselves, the New Zealanders appear to have a great variety of other gods, besides the one whom they call emphatically the atua.
From John Rutherford, the White Chief by Craik, George Lillie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
